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 0:43
Hello, everybody. Good morning or whatever time of day it is, where you are when you are listening to this. It is morning here. It is a brisk morning. It's November in Maine where I live. And it was about 24 degrees Fahrenheit this morning, when I drove my daughters to school, that for you in the world of Celsius is below zero. It's freezing ice on my windshield this morning when I went out to my car. It's cold, but it's nice. It's nice to feel the brisk air. I'm one of these people that excuse me, that enjoys the changes and seasons a whole lot. It's one of the nice things about living in the Northeast. Today, my friends, I'm going to talk to you about things, mysterious things, I'm going to talk to you about astral projection, the astral body, the astral plane, and I am going to relate it all to shamanism. Because that's what I know. I'm sure there are lots of other people who have different perspectives. And that's cool. But I do try to not speak from a perspective that I don't have that would not be helpful for anyone and it would make me look silly. And that's not something I want to do. So I'm going to talk about the astral today, particularly the astral body and astral travel, astral projection, the astral plane. But I think you know, what I need to do. First is to set a baseline and to SET set up, you know, this is something I would like to do, I like to define my terms and talk about, you know, set a baseline for what I'm explaining. And this is not because my explanations are better than anybody else's. It's or that I expect you to, you know, adopt my definitions without question. This is only so that you can better understand what I mean, when I'm talking about what I'm what I happen to be talking about. So I'm going to set a baseline, I'm going to talk about some definitions. And certainly, I'm going to be talking about spiritual things which are non physical and are experienced in different ways depending upon who you are, and what culture you come from, and all kinds of things. So there will be definitions of the same word that don't match mine, there will be different words used for the same things that I'm describing. And that's totally fine. These are not contradictions. These are just differences in the way that words are used. So for example, in the United States where I live, I call something an elevator. And in the UK, they call it a lift. who's right and who's wrong? Well, nobody's nobody's wrong, right? We just use different words for the same thing. And you know, there are other words were over there. A biscuit means something means what we would call a cookie over here. I watch a lot of the great British baking show. It's one of my favorite shows. And after remember, when they're talking about biscuits, they're not talking about what we call biscuits. Is that right? It's not right or wrong. It just how they're using words. So that's my only intention in when I say this is what this means. It is always what it means to me. And whether or not you adopt that. I don't it doesn't matter to me if you adopt my definitions of things. I just want I want to create understanding between us So I'm going to, I'm going to start by talking about a little bit about models. And I promise I'm going to get to where, where I'm going, I promise, I'm going to get to the astral stuff first. But I need to talk about models a little bit. And what I mean by model is a representation of something, something that is symbolic, but in a representational way. So if I look at the word, food, written out of these paper, that's a symbol for food. But it's not representational. It doesn't look like food. Right? I can't pick it pick it up. I can't. But when my daughters were little, they played with little plastic.
They played with plastic representations of food a lot. We had plastic fruit and plastic, vison plastic that and they would play grocery store and kitchen and I don't know throw plastic fernet each other whatever they would do with it. Those are models of fruit, they are not fruit. They're models because they're representational. Okay, so a model includes something that might like a map. A map is representation of, you know, an area, these maps all the time, you know, when I'm trying to get places maps in my phone, my GPS helps me navigate places where I would get lost normally. And the map and there is a model, because the model is not the road, but the road is represented there. And I can, you know, it is somewhat useful to me to be able to look at a representation of the road and see where I'm supposed to be going. So models always have to limitations, right, every model, no matter what it is, if it's a model of you know, a plastic model of food, or a map, or a model, you know, plastic model that you build or an architect's model that they build of a building they're about to construct, or a mental model, which is a representation of something. All models have two major limitations. And we'll call those limited limitations, deletions and distortions, right. So deletions are the old maps delete a certain amount of information. There are no maps that I'm aware of out there that are, first of all, one for one representations, right? There's an old joke from the comedian, Stephen Wright, who said, I have a full scale map of full scale map of the United States, it says one mile equals one mile, it's very difficult to fold, right? It's kind of funny, if you think about that, that wouldn't be a very useful map, right. And so all maps, delete certain amounts of information. So if I'm looking at a topographical map, for example, it's going to show me elevation, and lakes and all of that stuff. But it probably not going to show me like population density, because that's not useful when I'm using that kind of map when I'm trying to like, navigate a mountain range or something like that. And a street map is a different kind of map. And that helps me navigate the streets. But it might not show me elevation, or it might not show me where people's houses are. So it necessarily deletes information, no map is complete. And when we understand that, we can start to question our own mental models of things when we think we know everything. About anything, trust me, we do not. Because everything that we hold in our minds are models or models of what the reality of something is. And you can know a whole lot about something right? You could be an expert in. I went to school with somebody who was studying fish neurology. Right. I have to say that is you know, he's probably the only person I know there are probably lots of fish neurologist out there but um, does a very specific thing and you can gain a lot of expertise when you learn something, but does he know absolutely everything there is to know about fish neurology, probably not, or a specific nervous system of specific breed of fish. He would know more than certainly more than I do. So this person has a mental model of fish neurology, that is probably much more detailed, has much less than deletion than I have. So that is the first limitation is deletion, and the other one is distortion, and that no map is a perfect representation. Some maps get rich, or models, I'm sorry, some models get really close, you know, the plastic fruit model is not very accurate, you know, the shapes, the sizes might be different. If I cut it open, it's not going to look the same on the inside. If I look at it under a microscope, you know, it's not going to have cells the way fruit might.
Same thing with a map, maps gonna distort slightly. And, you know, we know that there are inaccuracies in all maps, there's a level of inaccuracy there, there, you know, some distortions there. Also, the Earth is round, hate to tell you, if you think the earth is flat, I have actually flown around the earth. And it is a ball. Like every other planet, in our solar system, and probably most likely in the universe, it is a ball. And it, it's round. So when I have a map that I can lay out flat on the table, it has to distort, because, you know, it might try to represent the curvature of the earth. But again, it's a flat, it's a flat map. You know, if you've ever seen them, you know, maps of the world where they try to lay out all the countries on a flat surface are incredibly distorted. They have to be, you know, because the world isn't flat, it's a globe. And when you try to lay everything out, you know, and it doesn't curve, right. So things on the same things on the same latitude don't curve around the poles. That is very distorted. So all maps, delete, and distort. Why am I talking about? I'm using the term map and model kind of interchangeably here. Sorry. Why am I talking about models? Why am I talking about maps? Well, because I'm going to and I spent a lot of time on this. And I realize this, but it's really important. It's really important even beyond what I'm going to talk about today, to start to look at the models of things we hold in our, in our brains in our consciousness and our unconsciousness. We look at the models of things we and we start to realize that we do we everything we look at everything we think we know is missing information, and is distorted. Right? So we do not accurately 100% accurately know anything that's just impossible. And becoming comfortable with that is a cool thing. It allows us to play with our perception of reality a little bit. Robert Anton Wilson, whether you like his writing or not wrote about we live in these reality tunnels. We live in these paradigms, these reality tunnels where if something really bizarre happens outside of our the the tunnel vision we have about the reality we live in, we tend to negate it because it's hard for us to grasp. And we have this thing called cognitive dissonance, which is it's hard to it's hard to hold competing feelings or competing ideas in your head at the same time. So if I were so I believe that the world is round, I have experienced the world is round. I've been up in a plane and gone, you know, flown completely around the Earth. I went to Asia, flying in one direction, and they came back flying in another direction. So I have been around, I've been around the earth and seen it seen it as round. So it would be hard for me to simultaneously hold to the idea that the earth is flat. That would cause a level of discomfort and that's called cognitive dissonance. So what I asked then, for you and for myself, is, you know, you when you develop some flexibility in your belief system and your models of the world, you become more adaptable, you become more resilient. So when you can step in and say, okay, you know what, what if I'm not saying you need to change your beliefs about anything, but you'll be like, what if I didn't believe this or what if I believe something different? How would that affect me you can do these mental experiments, and they can prove very fruitful. You can find out, you can learn things about yourself, you can learn things about the world, you can start to empathize with other people as well. Because you can take on their perspective better. So now that I've gone through all of that,
I spent a quarter of the show talking about models, but I think it's important, I could do an entire show about this. But I'm going to apply this to some shamanic and spiritual stuff, I promise. So I'm going to talk about the astral and I'm going to talk about first models of I'm just going to deal with human beings at this point, you think of a human being. So my model in my brain of a human being is an individual, a person, okay, human being has has a body, they have a mind they have a spirit. This is my model, some people have different models have different constructs. And of course, there's deletion distortion going on with my model of what a human being is, I understand that and if you understand that, it makes it makes taking on new ideas much easier. So, in my model of human beings, they are my concept of what humans are there complex systems, a human being is a complex system of inter penetrating and interlocking systems. Interlocking may not be a great word, but I have to come up with a better one, interactive systems, many, many, many, many interactive systems. So I will give you an example, we will take the physical body, if we take that as a single system, the physical part of human being, we have all of these systems, we have the nervous system, the respiratory system, the circulatory system, the digestive system, the reproductive system, all of these systems. And so just the body is a very, is a set of very complex systems. And there are you know, like I said, there's somebody who studies fish neurology, so you can have, you have experts who studied just kind of one system at a time. However, let's talk about how these systems interpenetrate interact and interlock. So if I just think about my respiratory system, we'll get even simpler, I'll talk about my lungs, just specifically my lungs. Okay, that's part of my respiratory system. Well, my lungs move in part, because of the diaphragm muscle in my stomach. So, you know, is that is my diaphragm part of my respiratory or muscular system? Or are these two systems interacting and interpenetrating? Somehow? Do they sometimes occupy the same space? Do they, you know, do they work together? We're talking about the ribs that go around my lungs, and those are, you know, there are muscles, their muscles there, and the ribs have a certain amount of cartilage and, and flexibility and my ability to breathe is affected by my ribs, ability to flex and move and the musculature in there. So there's, you know, now we have at least three systems working together. Okay, and then inside my lungs, and you know, you'll pardon me if I'm not a doctor. I'm not an expert. But so I'm going to, you know, if I'm, if I'm Miss speaking a little bit about where things where things lie, please forgive me, it's just to make a point. So inside my lungs, there are nerves, nerve cells, whatever that pick up things like the amount of carbon dioxide I have in my system and relay that to my brain. So there's an overlap with the nervous system. And of course, the nervous system overlaps with the, the you know, the the musculature that creates my breathing and, you know, so everything interacts interpenetrates
these systems don't live in isolation. Okay, so the physical body is one system. In many esoteric or occult practices, schools of thought there are humans have many bodies Okay, the physical is one the physical is dense matter, it's matter, it's very dense it has mass, it has weight, it has a definite shape, you know, that we can deform that shape, we can change it, but it is rather solid, we experience it is rather solid. And then, you know, the the other, the other bodies that essentially overlap and interpenetrate and interact with the physical body and with each other, get less and less dense. So, you know, at kind of the next level of density, we have the etheric or energy body, right. And if you've had acupuncture, or practice Tai Chi, or gotten Reiki, this is energy body work, things that may closely align with the very close to the physical body closely align, there are, you know, again, the energy body has many systems, you know, in acupuncture, if you look at, you know, acupuncture charts, they're all these meridians and vessels and, you know, all of this stuff. And, you know, outside of that outside of the body, you have what's called the etheric double, which is what a lot of people see when they see auras. You know, it's a thick energy that extends outside the body, slightly, you know, slightly outside the body an inch or a couple inches away. And then beyond that is what people call the aura. Right, if you see auras, and that can go many, many feet, dozens of feet, or sometimes it's very close, and that is much less formless, it's less dense than the meridians and the the, the, you know, the vessels and and it's much less dense than the etheric double. So, again, the etheric body, if you you know, embodies a weird term for it, because we think of body being very physical, but the etheric body is the closest spiritual body that we have to, to the physical, in this model, and we talk about density oriented about frequency is the closest frequency to the material world. And the etheric body is very affected by the physical body. So, for example, this is how tai chi or Qigong work, right, we move, we move energy around in our bodies by moving our bodies, because these things interact, much like flexing my diaphragm, moves air into my lungs. Okay, these things are interactive and independent, inter penetrative. So, you know, if we're going, and again, you know, I'm making these artificial distinctions. This is a model that is, you know, it's it's deleting information, and it's distorting. So where does one body end and the other one begin? It's really, really hard. It's really up for debate. And it doesn't really matter all that much to me anyway.
And what matters and model I'm going to go back to models just for a moment, what matters to in any model is really how useful it is how, how suited it is to purpose. So a street map is very helpful to me if I am navigating in a car, where a topical topographical map might not be as helpful, because I don't need to know the elevations of mountains with no roads on them, not going to be driving through them. But I could still use it as kind of suited. But if I'm trying to determine the elevation of a mountain, or the depth of a lake or something like that, then the map and my phone, the GPS, and my phone is probably not going to be suited for that. But they're both models of the same thing. So again, the model is what measures how can a model is, you know, good is a relative term, but it's really how suited something is to its purpose. So just for explanation, I'm using this model, I realize it's not perfect, and in some esoteric systems, they're going to use these different bodies in different ways. And so they will have a different map of the bodies and that's totally fine. I understand that these things will differ. I'm okay with that. I understand how models work. I have a model of models that's very useful. So when we move beyond the ether, Eric, the energy body kind of the next level down in this model is the astral the astral Body and the astral body is less dense than the etheric. It is a different frequency. I don't know if you'd call it higher or lower, but I perceive it as higher in frequency. The physical body to me is perceived as we're talking about vibrational frequency as lower in frequency because it's closer, you know, it's physical, it's slower, right? Then slower than thought, for example. So let's talk about the astral people might know astral projection, right? out of body experiences. So the astral is the realm of imagination. And that's really where, you know our imagination interacts with our spirit. So there's an overlap of what we call the mental body, the emotional body, all of these, all of these things. The as we get, as we get less dense as we move away from the physical, things become more formless. So the astral body is more formless than the etheric body, the etheric body is very closely follows the pattern of the physical body. When I move my arm, the arm of my etheric double whammy, my physical arm, I'm also moving, the meridians that go through my arm that are part of the etheric and I'm also moving my etheric double in a way and probably affecting my aura a bit. So the astral is much less dense and is much more formless. However, when we astral travel or dream, when you dream, you're dealing with the actual because again, it is the, the realm of imagination. Things can seem to have quite a lot of form. And this is just our consciousness making meaning out of these things. And in so when, when I perform a shamanic journey, which is which is a type of astral travel, I leave my body using an altered state of consciousness and they travel in these non ordinary realms.
I am not actually traveling traveling anywhere physical, right? If I go to the lower world, I am my travel into the earth is metaphoric. Right. I'm not going into a pool of lava somewhere into the core of the Earth. I'm traveling to another realm, I'm using that I'm using my imagination too, and metaphor to tune into these realms. But they all you know, because they are so Formalists time and space doesn't really apply to them in the same way that applies the physical world we know that time and space are intimately linked with mass and the astral body has does not have what we would consider mass. So well Time flows in the astral it is much looser, and this is why we can do things in the astral like look at probable futures. And I will say that the future the physical future is not set in stone. So anybody who predicts the future is predicting probabilities. Anybody who affects things in the future through magical or esoteric means is affecting probabilities tipping things in one direction or another. And honestly, that is totally fine. Like that's you know, that's okay to understand that. So time does flow but it flows in a really different way and where we kind of explore probabilities we can also go backward in time and explore past lives or you know, things that things that happened 10 minutes ago or what have you in some level of detail because those things are recorded they recorded in the astral so so the astral so astral projection people kind of know about and I'll tell you that when I was a boy, um, I had a number of out of body experiences. And at first they frightened me. And then I became really interested in them and then I found a book in my library About out of body experiences. And I tried for a really long time to replicate them with some, you know, with some success. And some, you know, some failure, didn't really know what I was doing. But thought it was fascinating had some lucid dreams as well. Lucid dreaming is very close. And then I started studying shamanism and shamanism has a tried and true method for getting out of your body and doing work and doing things on the spiritual realm. And that's cool, because now I can do this. Now I can do this at will and it's much more useful. It was a kid I was just curious. My journeys these days, are less curious and more purposeful. I do journeys for clients, I do journeys to divine formation to provide healing, that sort of thing. So, in a class recently that I was teaching, a student asked, what is the difference between astral travel and shamanic journey? And my answer to that and other practitioners might disagree, but the you know, the other practitioners I've talked to seem to think that this fits is that astral travel is mostly when people do that when people project astrally is mostly what we would call a Middle World journey in shamanism it is one type of shamanic journey. And the difference is that it is when we journey in shamanism we always go with a helping spirit, particularly in the Middle World. The Middle World is the spiritual overlay of the physical world, is the astral version of the world that we live in. So we live in the middle world because we live in this we live in this environment and there isn't a spiritual component behind everything.
Which is at the essence of everything. And that's the astral and when we travel when we do Middle World journeying, we can see physical objects but what we're seeing is the astral and etheric representations of those. So we can see spirits we can see ghosts ghosts are also astral beings. Most of the time, at least in my experience, they do not have an etheric component. So one of these days I will deeply explore on this show what happens when we die and what about ghosts and what about reincarnation and all those things. I'll do that in depth. But when we have ghosts when they're stuck here, at least in my experience, they are they are astral. So their mental their mental components the etheric form kind of gets stripped away. Now, um, the astral and etheric bodies can be strongly affected by our life experiences. That's why acupuncture works acupuncture and Reiki work on the etheric. They work in the energy body. And we can have we can have wounds to our energy body. The evil eye is something that exists in many the idea of the evil eye is something that exists in many, many cultures. And I can tell you, that is a real thing that some people just have some people seem to be genetically able to do this. And it is extremely damaging to the etheric body. It's you can imagine it as sort of like laser beams shooting out of somebody's eye when they feel really angry or jealous or what have you. And it can burn into the etheric body which can cause sickness and bad luck and all kinds of all kinds of things. I'll do a whole episode on luck too. Because luck isn't just a concept it's an energy in my model of in my model of things so you know, the astral when we add when when people astral project when they practice astral projection and lucid dreaming and stuff they're doing, they're traveling and they're, but they're not going with helping spirits which is what shamans do. So when I travel in the Middle World, I will always ask helping spirits to accompany me. The reason for that is, one is they act as tour guides they show me if I'm looking for something or I'm trying to find a person that I'm working with or I'm trying to find lost soul essences, and soul essences or astral talk about that in a moment. So When, you know, when we travel, you know, the other thing that can happen is, you know, there can be suffering spirits out there. So ghosts and you know non human spirits and all kinds of things. And not always spirits that mean us harm, but spirits that could do us some damage if they just decided to hang out, or follow us home or wreak some havoc in our lives. And so helping spirits protect us that way as well. And so, you know, it's a little bit of a caution about astral projection. If it's something you practice all the time, you might want to take up, you know, learn from a shamanic teacher, such as myself or somebody else, shamanic journeying, the it'll only make your astral projection better, and it will definitely make it safer. So when I travel in my astral body, the astral body because it is really affected, the astral is really affected by imagination. And imagination doesn't just mean I'm making things up, it means I'm giving form to something I'm giving an image imagine I'm giving an image to something. So it will appear and I'll have I'll hear sounds and I'll I'll have sensations that I'll feel and I'll smell things. But these are not coming in through physical organs, they're coming in as spiritual information interpreted in my consciousness as more or less physical things, although, you know, it's very loose, there's shape shifting that can happen, you know, when we talk about shape shifting, I have never witnessed somebody physically shape shifting. So I don't know if that is a realistic thing or not. If it is, it's very rare. But I have experienced shape shifting on the astral both myself and others.
Other people who are you know, in human, still in human body, but who are you know, meeting me during a journey. And spirit shape shifts all the time I helping spirits show up in different ways. So, one of the things one of the ways this gets really interesting is when you look at spirits from mythology, Gods and Goddesses and angels and Mythological Beings, right. And, you know, these things do exist. They exist, at least because people have given them form imaginative form. But, you know, honestly, when you look at how there's overlap between all of the myths of the worlds, you realize that there there's something to it, there's an essence there. There's something underneath that that's happening. But what you do have very frequently is you will have Gods and Goddesses are certain beings that will take on different forms depending upon how they're represented. So, in so for example, in you know, Hinduism and some forms of like tantric Buddhism and stuff, you will have deities who will have, you know, will have like, a, I don't know what you call it, like a happy form and a wrathful form, and the wrathful form might be very brutal looking, for example, in you know, it certainly happens in Greek mythology, you hear a lot of shapeshifting, Zeus was always turning himself into stuff. Right. So these, because these beings that we might consider gods and goddesses can show up in different forms. It doesn't mean they're different beings, and even different names for the same being. Because honestly, you know, spiritual beings that are that advanced and that advanced is kind of a weird word, but there really are like, like foreign to the point of being space aliens for us to try to understand for us to try to understand them. We anthropomorphize them, meaning we turn them we give them human form. So we you know, depending upon your beliefs, many religions and spiritual belief systems have a very person like image of God if you are monotheistic or if you are polytheistic you probably have gods and goddesses that are more or less human formed. There are some differences we have what are called therian throats, which are beings that are half beast and half human or some part human. So we have things like fawns and Sati ears which are, you know, either part goat and part human or part horse and part human. And we have harpies, or which are, you know, birds with human heads, and we have sirens, the sirens who can appear as mermaids, or, you know, so half fish, half human or half bird and half human. So those are things you know. And so that's a very common shamanic theme, as well. And we see that in cave paintings from 10s of 1000s of years ago, we see human beings with deer antlers, or we see people turning into Buffalo. And that is such a common theme. And it's one of one of many, many reasons why we think shamanism goes back to the beginnings of human symbolic thought. Right, where people started adopting spirituality and doing arts, you know, making representations of things in deep caves, which were pretty sure those were the reason for that was spiritual, like, you know, if you were living from hunt to hunt,
in a very harsh environment, you probably wouldn't crawl on your belly, through a quarter mile long cave to spend, you know, years, decades, even, you know, sometimes there are cave paintings that are, you know, 1000s of years apart in the same cave, to just to paint some art in a place where you weren't living. Because we know that they're, you know, they're these caves that are full of paintings that have no evidence of people living or eating in them. You know, so, pretty sure that these were added because of the images that these were spiritual things. So were people at one time able to turn into animals in the physical realm? I don't know. I mean, I don't know. I don't understand how it could be possible. But there are lots of things today that we didn't think were possible some time ago, faster than light communication and quantum entanglement, and, you know, space travel and flight. So I think of my grandmother, my grandmother just turned 105 She was born in 1916. In bath, Maine, still around still kicking. And when I think about what it was, like, when she was born in 1916. And if I had been around then and told her, you know, say she was 519 21. And I had told her, you know, in your lifetime, we will spend, we will send spacecraft, you know, to the end of the solar system. And we will send people into space, and people will walk on the moon and how crazy might I have sounded? Yeah, there was sci fi back then. You know, there was HG Wells and Jules Verne and all of that stuff back then. But um, you know, that was pretty fanciful. And if I had, you know, if I had told her that we would have machines where we could see inside the human body using magnets. That would have sounded crazy, very unrealistic. So who knows? Who knows what's possible? Nobody knows what's possible. We know it's probable. And that that's exciting to me. So let's talk about the astral plane. So this is a thing and people think when they're traveling, you know, their astral projecting, they're projecting to the astral plane, as if there is one. That's sort of like me saying, I'm traveling to Europe. Sure, where, you know where in Europe? There are many men, you know, am I traveling to Eastern Europe? Am I traveling to Western Europe? Am I traveling to the parts of Europe where they speak French? Am I going to the Alps? Am I going to Northern Scandinavia, you know that not really specific Europe is a general location, as is the astral plane because there are. So shamans when we journey generally, we recognize three worlds, the upper world, the Middle World, and the lower world. And you can see why the world tree or the access Monday are important symbols in shamanism, because the roots of the tree connect beneath the earth and the branches go up to the sky and the trunk of the tree is where we are. So is a very representative is very representational representative, I guess that's a better word representative of man, and how we can travel up, we can travel down and we live, we kind of live here. But those three worlds, again, are like saying I'm going to Europe, there are many, many worlds, I don't know how many probably infinite. There are people who are mapping out these worlds, which I find fascinating. I have little, little areas that I go to pretty regularly. When I when I journey.
And up and down are metaphors, there's symbols, again, it's just about tuning the consciousness to different layers of reality. So one model one way one representation that I like to look at, look at this, as a metaphor, if you think about if you had, you know, there used to be maybe still have these anatomy books, right, and they had sheets of clear acetate or plastic. And you know, it would start with, you know, it would start with a page that had the skeletal system. And you know, then you would have a piece of plastic that would lay over that, that would show the muscles and that would lay over the the, you know, the skeletal system, and then you would have another clear piece of plastic that would lay over that which might be the organs. Right? Or, you know, the different systems and then another one that might be the blood vessels, and then you know, another one that would lay over that that would have the skin, you know, that sort of thing. There were representations like that. And if you take all of those kind of sandwiched together, you know, that's a little bit what the world is, like, from my perspective, what the worlds are like from my perspective. They're they all kind of exist together. They interact and interpenetrate just like the human body does. And because they don't occupy physical space always, of the etheric. The etheric does sort of Occupy physical space, but the astral does not travel is really metaphoric. But it's the only way because we are so tied into the physical. Living in the physical and traveling around in the physical and time and space have meaning for us. It's, it tends to be how we interpret things on the astral plane. So I want to talk briefly about what can happen to the astral body and this is where shamanic healing comes into place. So another term for the astral body. And again, people might use these terms differently, but this is how I use them. Another term for the astral body is the soul body and the soul body. I'm using these terms interchangeably. I don't, I don't recognize really a difference from them or between them. And so the soul body or the astral body is definitely affected by our life experiences. It can be wounded, it can be drained of energy it can all kinds of things can happen to it. And this is where much of shamanic healing comes in. Now, you might have heard of something called Soul Retrieval. That is a shamanic healing ceremony that I'm in know is meant to help with trauma and what happens with trauma is part of our soul body can break off and get lost. It makes splits to seek safety. And if that doesn't return on its own, that can get lost. And what happens is that bubbles again, these layers affect each other. And that can manifest as sickness, it can manifest as depression, dissociation, all kinds of things. And so, you know, a shamanic practitioner will do a soul retrieval ceremony that will be meant to restore some of the soul essences which will bring healing ability back to a person. Now, a lot of people go to shamanic healing, and they expect miraculous healing. I've got, you know, diabetes, or lung cancer, or kidney disease or something. And if you do a soul retrieval for me, I'm going to be miraculously healed on the physical plane, it unfortunately, most of the time, it doesn't quite work that way. What happens is that, and I don't think it works that way, with any with most, or really any type of spiritual healing, I could be wrong. Again, anything's possible. But what happens is, we create the spiritual conditions under which you can heal better.
So sometimes, Soul Retrieval will provide relief from things like depression, or dissociation, that you know, some of those symptoms because the underlying spiritual conditions are, are fixed, but sometimes there is also physical healing that needs to take place. So I'm talking about depression for a second. So some people might get relief from soul retrieval. And some people might have problem like physical problems that have to be healed. To solve the depression issue. So depression, some people associate that with low levels of serotonin. So maybe your body's not producing enough serotonin. There are very frequently My understanding is with depressed people, there are inflammatory markers in their blood, so you might have to treat inflammation in your body. But again, it will be helpful to have the spiritual healing. And I always tell clients that, you know, spiritual healing works really well hand in hand with other forms of healing, which might include you know, allopathic medicine. Naturopathic Medicine, it might include acupuncture might include dietary changes, exercise, physical therapy, what have you, you should not pass those things up in favor of spiritual healing, we so often with a picture of the person in our head of a, you know, a man laying his hands on somebody, and that person can walk all of a sudden. And that happens. It happens from time to time. The faith healers you see on TV are mostly fake, and, unfortunately, take advantage of a lot of people. And those people when they follow up with them, afterwards, somebody throws their crutches down and walks around. Um, when they do follow up to those people, they generally don't have long term effects from the work from the whatever, whatever is supposed to have happened, even though there's a placebo effect. And placebo is really the mental body affecting the physical. And even with that, you know, these faith healers, I would say most most, if not all of them, particularly if they're on TV asking for your money or not really doing anything. I'm sorry if you if that is her, you know if that thought is discouraging to somebody or something along those lines, but there has been so much fraud I've seen there's a guy I've seen on TV recently who got had a huge following years ago. And he got caught. He had a an earpiece in his ear, and they were feeding him information about people in the audience that they had researched. And some crew some investigative crew went in there and using radio equipment picked up the signal from the control room, that side Oh, over on your left side is Mrs. Smith. And she has a son who's suffering from, you know, diabetes and she has Back Pain and whatever. And then you would see this guy on TV going, Oh, over here, I feel there's Mrs. Smith and, oh, your son's got diabetes. And then people would take that as a sign that he was getting information from God or what have you. And he would put his hands on them, you hope you're healed, and then walk away, and he would never be no follow up or anything. And he was, he was stealing a lot of money from people. And when he was found out, and it was revealed, he was a fraud, he lost almost everything. Well, guess what? He's back, you know, it's 10, or 20 years later, he's back on TV doing the exact same thing. I really just like that, I have to be honest, I really dislike that I just like a lack of ethics, particularly in the world of spirituality. And, you know, I do believe in karma. So I do believe that he's probably going to suffer for the rest of his life, he's probably suffering now that he feels like he has to do this rather than making an honest living, or actually helping people. Yeah, you know, but
he's a con man. And he's still at it, unfortunately. And there's a lot of people who want to have miraculous healing and faith and all of these things. And I appreciate that. And I have a great deal of faith in spiritual healing and the power of the mind to heal and the power of the Spirit to heal. But I don't think that's what this guy is doing. I don't think he has mended his ways. I think he's, you know, when I watch him, I can see some of the tricks that he's doing to people where he, you know, grasps people by the head and puts his thumbs over their eyes and pushes them down on the floor. And here's, you know, here's a woman who's been on crutches. And people think it's the power of, you know, the power of divinity, knocking that woman over to heal her. And I was like, I could do that to anybody right now. I could, if I would, you know, if they let me grab their head and put my thumbs over their eyes, I could knock anybody, anybody down. Don't care how big or strong you are. But especially if you're an older woman, you know, and, or an older person doesn't have to be a woman, an older person on crutches. It's obscene. Anyway, off I go on a tangent. Um, so really, this is you know, this is meant to give you an understanding of the astral there, there's been there's a book and a mini series, I think, on Netflix called behind her eyes. And that prompted somebody to ask me recently on the radio about astral projection, and is it a thing? Is it real? Can people take over other people's bodies can you know? So you know, and that's a very, it's a TV eyes version of that. And, you know, it is not very realistic. But you know, there's like everything, there's some some truth to it as well. And so there's been some interest in it. And so every so often, there's a resurgence and interest in astral travel, and remote viewing and all these all of these things. You know, and I may be biased towards shamanism. But if this is something you're interested in, take a course in, you know, take an introduction to shamanism class. I'm not saying you've got to take the shamanic past path for the rest of your life. That's definitely not for everyone. But, you know, if you're interested in soul travel, you know, it would behoove you to take an intro to shamanism class and learn us, you know, a safe and effective and controlled method of doing that. There may be some others out there I'm not aware of. I haven't seen any. But sham shamans have been doing this for, you know, millennia and millennia. So we're well practiced shamanic practitioners, we know what we're doing. And a good teacher will be able to walk you through these things very safely, very quickly and very effectively. I struggled for years trying to control astral projection. And then when I learned shamanic journey, I was like, oh, geez, that that's, I can do this anytime I want. Wow, that's something but you know, there's some there's some aspects that you have to learn. So I am at just about an hour I'm going to wrap up this episode. I hope this has been interesting. I hope you have found some things useful here. And you know, don't forget to subscribe to the show if you are not. Also just a couple of announcements. On my side. I do have a YouTube channel that I've launched recently. It's called shaman tent. You can find it by searching on YouTube. And there's Gosh over 50 videos on there. They're all instructional, and informational. And I have launched an app as well, which is called shaman world, the shaman World app. It's on iOS and Android. It's absolutely free. There's currently not even any advertising or anything on it. It has links, you know, you can listen to this podcast on it, you can watch videos, you can read articles. There are drum tracks if you decide to if you practice shamanism on there. So there's all kinds of stuff there. And so all of this stuff is all this stuff is absolutely 100% free. And as is this podcast, it's just my way of talking about and sharing something I love and I'm absolutely passionate about. And with that I will wrap it up I hope you are happy and healthy and I will talk to you real soon.
Announcer 1:01:20
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