Ep33 True Will and Spiritual Sovereignty

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, hello, everybody, Hello, my friends. I am not sick, but I do have a little bit of a scratchy throat. So I apologize for that my voice sounds a little bit different. It's just just allergies. Give me a little bit of a scratchy throat. But I am fine. And I'm feeling fine. And I hope you are feeling fine and staying safe and sane. And what can sometimes be a crazy world. Today, I'm going to talk about spiritual sovereignty and the true will. So, you know, per usual, I will start by defining what those things mean. And then you know what they mean, to me anyway. And, you know, that way we have sort of a level playing ground, you understand what I mean, when I say what I say? And you may define things in other ways, or, or have other people define things in different ways. And that is totally fine. I'm not here to impose my will, while we're talking about Well, today, on anybody. It's just so we can have a little bit of a well, it's a conversation, I realized it's one way when this podcast, but it is what it is, you know. And so these are topics that are really important to me, and spiritual sovereignty. I'll talk about what that is. But it's something that I'm writing a book currently, and that is a main thrust of the book, talking about spiritual sovereignty. And that's a term as far as I know, that I coined that term. As far as I know, I haven't seen anybody else use it. So it might be a little bit foreign to you. But you know, those two, two common words, spiritual and sovereignty, what does that mean? So, to me, spiritual sovereignty means the ability, or the capacity or the state of being able to exercise your true will, without interference. There's a lot packed in there. Right? There's true, oh, we're gonna talk about that in a second. But really, spiritual sovereignty is having the ability to stand in your power and follow your path without interference from from anywhere. Right. And there's and what sorts of things can interfere with that, what sort of, you know, what kinds of things can interfere with our standing in our power? And, you know, I, you know, I follow the path of shamanism. I am a shamanic practitioner. And so, you know, from, you know, shamans for many, many years, 1000s of years, have talked about power. And so we need to understand what that is because so often, you know, power is used as a negative term, right? Talk about people being power hungry, or people having power over other people. And power is merely just the capacity to you know, if we take the the physical definition of power, power is really the physical capacity to do work. So power from this perspective, is the you know, the power to accomplish the power to do things the power to, again, we're going to talk about the true will in a minute, the power to exercise your true will. So in that respect, power is really neutral. And so it's a it's a tool, right power is a tool and there's different kinds of power again, physical power I can have, you know, electrical power, I can have mental power, spiritual power. So, power is a neutral tool. And so if I think about tools, I can take a hammer, right, and I can take that hammer and I can use it to build a home. Or I can use that to hit my neighbor over the head. And there's so, in that respect, it is not the tool that is good or bad,

you know, or good or evil or what however you want to put those terms, the hammer itself is a tool, and it is how that is used. That is the you know that that is that is the result, right? So, you know, we talk about, you can talk about financial power, right, we can we have, you know, a lot of billionaires and millionaires in the world. Some of those people use their wealth in very philanthropic ways. Some of those people use a tremendous amount of wealth to benefit mankind as best they can. And we can talk about all of the, you know, we can get into arguing about all the ethical implications of hoarding large amounts of cash, and, you know, well, a lot of the world is impoverished and that sort of thing. But just talking about money, and there is, you know, at least at least in the West, here, we have this whole, you know, this phrase that comes from the Bible, that is, I think often misquoted as money is the root of all evil. And I believe the actual quote is, the love of money is the root of evil. So it's really about people who are greedy, and people who are so focused on money and accumulating wealth that they can't see, they don't care about anything else, they don't care about suffering, don't care about their spiritual development, that sort of thing. So spiritual sovereignty is really about standing in your own spiritual power. And having the ability to develop, evolve spiritually, without interference. And what kinds of things might interfere with that? What kind of things might interfere with your spiritual sovereignty? Well, there are a lot of them, unfortunately, um, you know, some of those things have to do with the culture that we live in, and the media that we take in. Right, and, you know, I'll, I'll give an example of that in, you know, in the Western world, in particularly in, you know, some parts of Europe and the United States. You know, we still have this concept of the Wicked Witch, and we see people as practicing witchcraft in league with the devil. And, you know, that has been the case for hundreds of years. And, you know, quite honestly, it's a lot of poppycock. And it's used, it had been used in the past to oppress women, for example, who were not, you know, oppress a lot of people, but especially women, who were not practicing witchcraft, who might have been practicing herbal medicine or, or not, might have had a wart on their face. And that was enough to, to have them put to death, in some cases, definitely imprisoned in a lot of cases. So, you know, but, you know, in in modern days, you know, there are lots of people who practice witchcraft as a religion or as a spiritual practice, and there isn't a devil figure in there, so they don't worship the devil. And, you know, most of the people who are doing that, who practice Wicca or some other form of witchcraft, have a very strong moral and ethical code, and don't do things that are harmful to others. In general, you know, there, there may be there are exceptions. But in general, however, you know, that being said, and there, you know, there's a little more tolerance for people, while a lot more tolerance for people doing that you're not going to be put to death. And yet, there's still a lot of TV and movies and plays and all kinds of things where we see wicked witches being the bad guy. You know, there's the movie, The Witch. Not that long ago, a number of years ago, and that was really scary as heck Scary Movie. And it really did paint the picture of witches in the way that they were conceived of, in the 1600s. in what is now the United States. And, you know, but made them a little bit more real. But we see that we see that a lot as we're coming into the Halloween season, especially we'll have you know, images of ugly witches and that sort of thing.

And so, let's say, you know, let's say it is your path, it is your true path to explore Wicca or witchcraft or, or practice magic or that sort of thing. Well, there's going to be all of these cultural influences, right? They're going to be people who, who put pressure on you, and their culture applies pressure on you, and, and all of those things. So in that way, you know, that can interfere with your spiritual sovereignty with your ability to stand in your true spiritual path. You know, myself, I practice shamanism. And there are a lot of misconceptions about that. So, you know, a while back, I was, a couple years ago, I was teaching a class, in shamanism, and out of the blue, this individual contacted me, I've never spoken to this person before or anything, but somehow he had seen my class. And he called me a fraud. And he said that he was, you know, representing Native American people in the area. And they, they want him to put a stop to what I was doing. I don't know the truth of that at all. But I make it very clear that I don't practice Native American spirituality. I don't steal Native American tools. I don't pretend to be Native American. I don't dress up as a Native American. And I have seen that done. I've seen very recently, pictures from people doing shamanic work in Portugal, and they were dressed as they were dressed as planes, Native Americans with full war bonnets and war paint on and these were, you know, Portuguese people with no Native American Heritage misusing misusing those symbols. And that that's not something that I do. But still, there are those people out there who think that's what I'm doing for some strange reason. You know, most shamanism isn't Native American and not all Native American forms of spirituality were shamanic. So, you know, that the idea there is not doesn't hold weight. And this, you know, I would have preferred to engage this individual in a concrete conversation to, you know, better inform him about what I was doing. But he had already had already made up his mind. And so, you know, I didn't, I didn't change what I did, I don't change what I teach. But I do I did add, I did add a segment to when I'm teaching an introduction to shamanism class. I add a sec, I've added a section now about cultural appropriation, and how what we're doing is not you know, Native American spirituality even though it has been misperceived as that by people who are maybe well meaning but very misinformed. So there's cultural pressures, right? Um, they're also they're also spiritual pressures. There's all kinds of stuff going on, spiritually. When I see clients for Healing Sessions, very frequently, people have you know, all kinds of things going on, they might have soul loss as a really common one, which is a result of trauma. Or they might have intrusions which we pick up when people direct angry thoughts at us or we just walk into a place where there has been violence or some other you know, really, really what people might call negative vibes or negative energy. And sometimes that stuff sticks to us, and we walk around with it. And it blocks us from being a clear channel to spirit and shamanism we call being a clear channel, the spirit becoming the hollow bone. If you think about a hollow bone, it's like a tube, an empty tube. And in some cultures, they, you know, they would blow through a tube to do spiritual work, you know, blowing. So, you know, soul parts back into somebody's body or energy or what have you. And obviously, you can't do that if the bone isn't hollow. And so when shamans talk about becoming a hollow bone or talking about is, you know, getting rid of the interference,

and becoming a clear channel for spiritual work through us. This isn't a level, it's not a level of shamanism, I have reached the hollow bone level, you know, I have a background in martial arts, and a lot of people like, you know, aim to attain the level of black belt, and it doesn't hold, you know, holds individual meaning for people, but like, universally, that doesn't mean a whole lot. Because they're, you know, I can go to a certain school and get my black belt in a year, or, you know, in my school, it took 10 years. So there's a big difference between, there's no standardization, there's but but people place a lot of emphasis on levels. And shamanism is not patriarchal, it's not a pyramid scheme, there aren't levels, anything. So it's really what it is. It's an ongoing process. It's an ongoing thing of working on oneself, to become more and more that hollow bone. And whether if that's true, whether you're doing healing work on yourself, or just on, you know, on yourself or for others, or you're not doing healing work, and you're just using shamanic tools for spiritual revelation, direct revelation, you want to clear out the channel, so you can receive messages from spirit, without, you know, with less interference, so there's a bunch of stuff that can get stuck to us. And working on clearing that out. There's also a lot of stuff we carry around, we have, we have a shadow, right, this is the term that young coined for exiled parts of ourselves. So for example, you know, I might have been raised in a family where men being artistic was looked at as a masculine, and masculinity is a bad thing. And so there was shame attached to that, and I might have repressed artistic urges, those would be in my shadow somewhere. And until I pull those up and confront those, and you know, integrate them with myself, I am not going to be whole and there's going to be parts of myself that force me to act up in unpredictable ways in ways that I wouldn't normally do that. And so that's one example. But there's a lot of stuff we crammed down into our shadow could be like, anger, right, some people. And this isn't to say that you should fly off the handle, and attack people whenever you're angry. So you're not sticking that in your shadow. No, there are good ways to express anger. And there are out of control ways to express anger. And you have a right to feel your feelings, whatever they are. And so a lot of times we stuff our feelings. You know, and in the place where I grew up, you know, men really only allowed to express to emotions, and that would be humor, or anger. And everything else was seen as a masculine. And so men didn't cry. We heard that there's a famous song called Boys, boys don't cry. And, you know, that was something I was taught growing up, boys don't cry. You know, and my father would, you know, if my brother and I would cry about something when we were little, I'll give you something to cry about. And it was a threat of violence and so you stuffed you stuffed that. You stuffed that down. And that stuff definitely interferes with recognizing your true path following your true path. Exercising true will and so I Highly recommend to everyone who has who lives and who has ever lived in who will ever live, to do some kind of Shadow Work, Shadow integration, we all have shadows.

I don't care who you are. And I have seen that I have seen people who were recognized as enlightened teachers, who had large followings of people who committed suicide, or who sexually abused followers, or who wind up drinking themselves to death or all kinds of stuff. And so, these are people who might have woken up. And the philosopher Ken Wilber talks about waking up growing up and cleaning up, right. So waking up is, you know, sort of enlightenment or, you know, having having spiritual realizations. And, you know, some people gain I have, you know, I have witnessed, it's rare, but I have witnessed people who have exhibited powers that can be said to be supernatural, like, crazy stuff. You know, not stage magic stuff, but like some really, really weird phenomena, with with people who have developed themselves spiritually to a certain level. And we sometimes mistake that we sometimes think that this is that this person is perfected, somehow, right? Maybe they are the Buddha, or maybe they are Jesus, or Muhammad or what have you. And they are perfected being without flaws without sin, and nothing in their shadow. And that is not always true, and often not true. Because all of a sudden, you have somebody who hasn't done their Shadow Work, who hasn't done their cleanup work. Right, and they are abusing people, or, you know, sexually, physically financially abusing people, or they are harming themselves through chemical dependence, or committing suicide, or you know, all kinds of things. So these are people ultimately, who have not done their cleanup, and they I don't know, for sure, because I haven't lived their lives. But you know, I think that very frequently, there is a very high level of spiritual bypassing going on meaning, well, I have reached enlightenment now, so I don't have to worry about these things anymore. And there is nothing in my shadow, I have no ego anymore. And those things just aren't true. They're just not true, unless you know, I have not experienced anyone for whom That is true. Whether you know, observing in person or from afar. And so, there is this, when you develop, we call the astral body or the soul body, and that develops and that can develop significantly, you can do all kinds of things there. What comes along with that very often is hubris, right, this sense of, I am bigger, more powerful, pure, whatever, then I actually am a distorted sense of self. And a distorted sense of self isn't ego, it's a distorted ego, you still have a sense of yourself. And so, this is a thing, where, where spiritual abilities, cities in some, you know, in Sanskrit, I guess, can interfere with spiritual realization. I do know of one person and just from stories I never met this person is American teacher named Lester Levinson, he passed away I think, in the 90s. He was the originator of what is now called the Sedona Method. And, you know, according to people who knew him, you know, and studied with him or whatever he developed, you know, as a side effect of his spiritual work, not it was not The intention of his spiritual work, the whole intention of his spiritual work was to go free. Right, whatever that, you know, whatever that happens to mean in this context, that was the focus, but along the way, he developed some

spiritual abilities, shall we say. Um, so, you know, he could, he could, according to people who like manifest, Manifest ANYTHING and had significant control over his body. In fact, when he started, he was on death's door, he had had a massive heart attack, and he had been an engineer, I think, and gone home to die, basically. And it was at a time, you know, in like, the 1950s, or something where there was no, there, there wasn't the medical care we have today. And they said, you shouldn't even walk up a flight of stairs, because if you do, you're gonna drop dead. That's how bad it was, his heart was so blocked, and he healed himself. You know, he healed himself by diving into spirituality. And then later in life had significant control over his physical body. You know, I've heard stories from his students of him, you know, in his 80s, you know, you know, people were hiking up a mountain, and he, like, ran past them, and met them at the top, not even out of breath. But he could also manifest things in reality. So what happened was he you know, according to his students, again, you know, take it for, take it for secondhand knowledge. But according to his students, he developed a bunch of spiritual powers. You know, these abilities to do all of these things. And, you know, played with them for a little while, but then realize they were a trap for him. Right, because he didn't want an inflated ego, or distorted ego. He didn't he, his goal was to have complete freedom, complete spiritual freedom. This is that spiritual sovereignty I've been talking about. So what he did, according to them is he gave them up consciously. He's like, okay, I don't want these anymore. And had the ability to centrally delete the power, so that wouldn't tempt him away from his path. And I think of, you know, the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, right, as a good example of that the legend of the ring, where the ring grants, the ring grants powers to people who put it on. But people become addicted to it. And they turn into Gollum, or they do wicked things, or evil things or what have you, because they're so they forget themselves. And that's a really, really great metaphor for what can happen on our spiritual path. We can get tied up in Powers and abilities. And this isn't to say that you can't have some special abilities to heal or what have you, that you're using for good intention. But you know, the idea is not to get attached to them. And it's because there its power again, right? And it's like money, you know, I have, money is a form of power. And power is inherently neutral. It's not money itself that is good or evil. It is what you do with it. I can use money to feed starving people. Or I can use money to, I don't know, buy something that pollutes the environment. And so really, it's about making conscious choices. And this is all part of spiritual sovereignty. It's about making conscious choices and the ability to make conscious choices about how and where and when you use your power. Choice is really important. You know, it's important part of freewill. That being said, you know, there's some spiritual power that is used to circumvent people's freewill. And, you know, ethically I don't think that's a great idea. Because of that, people should have people shouldn't have free Well, I don't use the word should very often And I hope that this is something I do feel very passionate about that people should have the ability to choose their path to follow their true path. And I promise I'm going to get to true will in a moment.

So things like curses, you know, attacks, spiritual attacks on other people I know they're common, I know how common they are, you know, I think there was a well they dug up, you know, that was two, over 2000 years old, and they found dozens of Greek, you know, curse tablets thrown down the well. So apparently, this is a thing where people would carve curses into tablets, and then, you know, offer them up to this well to be taken place or whatever. Um, you know, and so cursing really, is a form of taking away somebody's free will. And I count in that. And this may seem odd to some people love spells, especially certain types of love spells, spells that people cast that are meant to make somebody fall in love with you, or love magic, or, you know, that sort of thing. Things that are designed to interfere with a somebodies free, well, there's a really fine line here. Um, you know, if, you know, if you have a partner, a love partner, spouse, or, you know, some other love partner, and you do some ritual together to enhance your love for each other, well, that's fine, because that's, you are both choosing to do that. As long as it's both, you know, you have both freely chosen. It's very different. If you do work to circumvent, you know, you cast a traditional Love Spell to make somebody fall in love with you. And very frequently, those things do not work out very well. I've heard horror stories don't do I'm not really a spellcaster. And I wouldn't if I were, I wouldn't do that sort of work. Right. And so, in shamanism, we have very few roles. But we do have, there are a few ethical guidelines that I follow that I don't, you'll never, ever, ever circumvent. And one of those rules is we never work on somebody without their permission. There are a couple of exceptions to this. One exception would be somebody who is unconscious and unable to give consent. So if loved ones asked me to work on somebody who was in a coma, for example, and I have I've done that I would, I would journey to them. And, you know, if, if I could, you know, talk to their spiritual selves in journey, I would, you know, then ask their permission to do work on their behalf. But if somebody called me up and said, You know, I need you to do a healing ceremony for my sister, but she can't know about it. Because she would, you know, reject, shop, you know, the practice of shamanism, or what have you. I just wouldn't do that work. That would be a big No. Because that would be interfering with somebody's will, with their choice, their decision. Um, you know, it also potentially work on children, we, you know, rule of thumb is children under 13 with permission of their parents. You know, I've done work, work for unborn children, you know, that sort of thing. But I don't Other than that, you know, and I would probably, I don't work a lot with children. But if I did, I would probably talk to talk through things with a child I was working with anyway. And check and see if they were okay with what was being done. But those are kind of rules of thumb that my teachers have given me and their teachers have given them and their teachers have given them and so on and so forth. And that's not necessarily true for all shamanic cultures and that sort of thing. But I do feel like that is a that's a very good role. Because I'm all about the spiritual sovereignty as I have been saying. So So, let me talk about true will, because I said that spiritual sovereignty is the ability to act on your true will to do things within your true will.

And, you know, the famous infamous occultist magician, Yogi, what have you, Alastair Crowley, some people will know him as you know, the beast and associate him with the devil and all these things. And a lot of that was his own doing he loved, he loved PR, he was definitely a larger than life, character, and loved even bad press. He was very dramatic. You know, and by all reports, he was not what we would consider these days, a very nice person, he was definitely abusive towards women, towards men towards his followers, you know, didn't take care of his children. There were all you know, all kinds of things going on with this guy. However, he did write a very, you know, many influential works on magic and occultism. And, you know, Raja, yoga, and, gosh, all kinds of stuff. And his most famous work, I would say, which is, you know, the first one that he penned, supposedly, with this spirits, this angel or what have you, standing over his shoulder, dictating it to him, while he was in Cairo, Egypt on his honeymoon, after having spent his honeymoon night in the king's chamber of the Great Pyramid, kind of a cool, kind of a cool story. He wrote his LIBOR Val L. legalese, or book of the law, which, if you tried to read is going to be you know, if you don't, you don't do some research. And you know, it's going to be a little bit challenging. I do have, I do have a couple of annotated copies of that, and some commentary on it, and have, you know, read a bit about it, because it's an important, it's a seminal thing that has shaped a lot of modern thought on spirituality. And so from that book, there is the law of Salima, which is what he called his organization, or his philosophy, maybe not his organization, but his philosophy and the the, you know, the practices are called the olema. And people who practice are called phony mites. Or they call themselves that, I guess. And so, you know, the most famous law to come out of that the law of the Lima is, do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law. Right, so do what thou wilt, shall be the whole of the law. Unfortunately, there's not a whole lot of description of what that means in that book. There's lots of commentary, and there's lots of other things. And so people who are not steeped in that type of learning, hear that. And I, you know, I know, this was my take on it. When I first read, I'm like, Oh, well, really, what he's saying is, do whatever you want, do what you will do what you want. And that's the whole that's it. That's the entire law, do whatever you want. You know, shoot people, if you want to shoot people, burn down people's houses, rape and pillage, because if that's what you want to do, that's the entire law. You know, when they will tell you that is not at all what that law means. It is not. It does not mean do whatever you want. Even though, you know, Crowley might have done a lot of whatever he wanted. And then some done some things that we would consider not so nice. But that's not the intention about the law. The intention is the the will they're talking about here is the true will, your true spiritual will. And really this is about following your spiritual path, not the path necessarily that you were born. Born into because your parents belong to a specific church or religion or, or were atheists or what have you. Um, and, you know, not,

you know, not the way society thinks you should believe. And, you know, so again, this is really about a path of self, Revelation, it's about following your own path. But you have to discover what that is. And that's the work. That's the work we all have to do. And it is about, it's about throwing aside the pressures that culture puts on us and throwing, you know, and working on ourselves to surface our shadow material and integrate it and, you know, do you know, the way that it was done through the limos, lots and lots of ritual, lots of studying lots of ritual magic, lots of group rituals, and, you know, that sort of thing. And that is not my particular bent, although I find a lot of that stuff really fascinating. You know, a lot of initiation, a lot of changing, changing, shaking up your spiritual makeup to find what it is that you are in alignment with. Um, so for me, you know, I do feel like helping people find their spiritual sovereignty, helping them feel like they're connected, and living, you know, discovering their true path. And living true to that living true to themselves. As a spiritual being as a as a spark of the Divine, I do feel like that is at least a part, if not, you know, the major part of my true will. Because what happens is, spirit kind of knocks you around a little bit, and it can be rough. I had a rough time, at the beginning of it. I've gone through several rough periods, we call those initiations in shamanism, where I might go through a health crisis, or a mental health crisis, or, you know, my life might fall apart, might get divorced, might lose jobs, all kinds of stuff can happen. And sometimes it happens all at once. And, you know, it's about kind of breaking down that ego a little bit, and shaking things up. And so you, you write the ship, and he becomes stronger for it. Sort of, like, you know, if you break a bone, and it heals properly, it will frequently heal stronger than before it was broken. Right, it's kind of the same thing. being shaken, having a dark night of the soul frequently makes people come out stronger on the other side, even though it seems like the end of the world while you're going through it. So sweet spiritual sovereignty is really about getting rid of the interference, the static, getting rid of the noise, and following the clear signal that feels, you know, when you click into it, it will feel natural, it will feel it will feel good, it will feel like home, it will feel like this is where I am supposed to be. And that was you know, honestly, that was what shamanism became for me when I was working in, you know, working through apprenticeships, and, you know, there was a point in time in the beginning, where I was, you know, resistant and, you know, didn't like doing a lot of the things and was scared of part of it. And there was a point where it all really clicked for me. And I, you know, said this is home, this is home for me, and this is my spiritual home. And so I feel like I'm following my true path. I'm teaching, teaching and doing these podcasts and writing articles and books and being quoted in the media and all kinds of stuff. That feels like an even bigger part of it. I love that part. I love being able to talk about this stuff and have people listen it's very, very rewarding for me. Because I hope you know my one goal with things like that is that I'm making a positive impact that I'm that I'm helping people in Any small way, seek out their true will and follow that

and do what thou wilt. Right? Do that, what your true will do it. And that's not to say that your true will is necessarily a path towards spiritual leadership of any kind. I don't know what your true path is, you know, part of it will involve, you know, everything we do, if you do it, if you go deep enough with anything you do, it becomes spiritual. I'm fully convinced of that. If you see a really good athlete, when they are in the zone, we'll take basketball, for example, when somebody is just playing amazing basketball, and their ego kind of drops away. And the game is sort of being is playing through them. I think that they are having a spiritual experience. And it's sort of like, you know, martial arts, like kendo can jitsu, you know, sword arts and things like that. Where there is a tremendous amount of focus required single pointed focus as a form of, you know, meditation, and you can go deeper and deeper and it becomes meditative. Right? You know, there are there is Zen archery, for example, people shoot bows and arrows, and it's make it into a meditative practice. And I think you can do that with anything, I think you can do it with computer programming, I think you can do it with baking, you can do it with riding your bike, you can make anything, a mindful spiritual practice. So I, you know, I don't know what your true path is. But I would love it if more and more people would find that what a world we would live in. Right, what a world we live in. I've said this to clients. I've had clients who were fantastic artists, for example, and sort of afraid to put their stuff out in the world, because what if people criticized it and this and that, and, you know, I'm, you know, my thought to them was will, you know, your art or your photography, or your music, or what have you is really taking something, you know, is really a way for you to express your spirit, it's a way for your spirit to speak to other people. And yeah, I mean, that will be intimidating for some people. And some people will be haters there that just exists everywhere. You know, it's like the guy who contacted me, who called me a fraud for teaching shamanism, and said it was his mission in life to stop me from doing what I was doing. Um, you know, that didn't stop me from doing what I was doing, because this is my path. And so, what I have to offer, and what you have to offer, and what my clients have to offer, and what everybody has to offer, the world is far more important than what the criticizers have to offer, than what the haters have to offer. And that form of criticism and hatred, and you can see it in the comment section of any YouTube video or anything online. The people just spewing the most vile stuff there. That is some base shadow stuff. That is some, that is some, you know, why do people feel the need to do that? Why would somebody who is happy and secure and spiritually developed, feel the need to criticize or hate on or insult people they have never met. Or people they've met for that matter, but people they have never met go online and lash out like that and take satisfaction from that. Think about that. Think about how much stuff that person has not confronted. Why that why that action is satisfying for them. The level of insecurity that comes through their the level of projection That comes through there.

You know, and almost anybody that's going to attack you in any way, is going to project a bunch of stuff onto you. Um, you know, I've definitely been through some tumultuous relationships where that was, where that was a norm, and been sucked into that myself to be honest. It's hard, it's hard, I do my best, we all do our best, but I am not going to fool myself into thinking I am not human, you don't have a shadow. And I don't have work to do, because I do. But I do my work. And I do it constantly. And I've been doing it for a long time. And I will continue doing it probably for the rest of my life. While I'm capable, I will work on myself. You know, and part of that is because I believe it is the most important thing for me to follow my true will, is the most important thing in my life, to do that. And the other reason is, you know, how I show up in the world is really important to me. I have children, I have a girlfriend, and she has children, my, my children and their children might have children someday, and I'll have grandchildren. And I will, you know, let me tell you, I am going to spoil the heck out of my grandchildren. I love kids, but it is my responsibility to leave this world a better place than it was when I came into it. And the best way I can do that is to show up authentically for the people I love, particularly the people in generations, you know, generations beyond me. So for my children, and even you know, their friends even and their grandchildren, like how many? How many lives? Do you touch through your children? How much of an impact can you make on the world? By showing if you have children? Or if you even if you don't have children, the example you can set for for children? What kind of what kind of world are you going to leave? And if you show up in a bold way, and yeah, it's hard. But if you show up in a bold way, and live out your true self, live out your true will follow your path. You're setting an example for others to do the same. And I believe if that is the if more and more people do that, accept that and don't try to stuff others into tiny little boxes. And repress what people really want to do. Or really, you know, not even want to do what they will to do. Right? What is the true path we don't prep, you know, press that down and make people live their life in shame or, or not for unfulfilled? or what have you. What a fantastic world we'll live in. It will live in a world full of art and music and invention. And, you know, spiritually enlightened people. And fantastic literature and all kinds of things, all kinds of things. Because people are not, you know, people are not you know, repressed people don't aren't held back from experiencing their true path and living out their true path. So, once again, spiritual sovereignty is the ability to follow your true will without interference. And I could say spiritual interference, but you know, there's a fine line between what is spiritual and what is completely mental and what is cultural. Right. But the true will aspect is really a spiritual thing. It's really the deepest part of you, expressing itself into the world. It is the divine spark. The divine light that is within you that is within everybody that is within every spirit. It was Every soul has at its center.

This, you know, amazing, bright light. That's how, you know, it's how I experienced it and journey. And that light is, you know, part of the whole of divine of divinity, you could say God, you could say the universe, you could say, whatever, whatever name you want to slap on it. So I look at it this way, if I were to take, if I had a beam of white light, right, and I held a prism up to that white light, right? You know, a glass prism, it would split, it could split that light into lots of different colors look like separate, perhaps look like separate and beams of light of different colors. And, but ultimately, they are all part of that original white light. Because if you take away that white light, if I then took, you know, something and blocked the light, those beams those individual colors, as individual beams of light would not come through the prison. Because their source is the beam of white light. And so that is a good metaphor for divinity for God for the god force, whatever what ever you want to call it. And we are the beams of colored light. We are diverse, we appear differently. We, you know, we think conceive of ourselves as individuals. as separate. separation is about, you know, ego is really about separation. But our sources that divinity and if you were to take that divinity away, we wouldn't exist. So we exist as an extension as a spark, as a beam. And, you know, we're individual individuals, but underneath it all, we are all connected to divinity in the same way. We're all the same product of that white light. And without that there is nothing, there's no existence, nothing happens. Not even emptiness, because emptiness is a thing. So anyway, that I'm going I'm going deep into theology here, and I kind of want to wrap it up, we're coming to the end of about an hour of podcast. I hope this has been interesting and useful and given you something to think about. Think about consider meditate on way, finding your true path. And again, you'll know it, it will click the universe will move obstacles, either in your way or out of your way that nudge you towards your true path. And it's your job to listen to those to pay attention to those to see what see what the universe is telling you. Some obstacles are meant to be leftover or crashed through and some are Oh, I'm really steering off the path here. Really doing something I shouldn't be doing time steer it back onto the path. Without I will leave you I hope to hear from you. Feel free to contact me through my website. And I will talk to you next time. I hope you stay safe and sane and healthy. And I love you all.

Announcer 59:26

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

Ep15 Love and Finding Your true Purpose

Announcer 0:31

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

Everybody, I'm going to say good morning, although I have no idea what time of day you're listening to this, it is morning where I am. It's a beautiful morning, and it's the day after the full moon, we had lots of great Full Moon energy. To celebrate this weekend, I am absolutely thrilled today to bring a guests to you. So you don't have to just listen to my voice.

Pardon me, by cough a little bit. I promise I'm not sick, I just having a having an allergy situation, it is beginning to be spring here. So my guest today is Rebecca qwave. And I am trying to remember when I met Rebecca, and it was at a seminar in Boston. And I remember that my children were infants, so it has to have been close to 14 years ago. So it's been a while. So my guess Rebecca qwave supports people around the world to rediscover and fully embody the love they are. Rebecca is a catalyst of transformation and expansion of consciousness. Her natural gift of activating you to your highest truth creates profound shifts quickly and easily. And after spending years caught up in the exhausting hamster wheel of striving for more, Rebecca began to you know, unraveling who she thought she was only to discover the indescribable life transforming love that was already there. Rebecca is here to lovingly guide and support you through your own unique process of awakening and transformation. And with that, good morning, Rebecca. It's so nice to see you.

Rebecca Quave 2:29

Good morning. It is it's wonderful to be here.

John Moore 2:33

And Rebecca, you are also on the I'm on the East Coast, you're also on the east coast. So at least we're talking in the same timezone today that we're you know, 1000 miles apart or something along those lines.

Rebecca Quave 2:45

Yeah, we've sort of covered the north south axis.

Yes, yes. from one extreme to the other, to have

John Moore 2:53

to have to work on some West Coast guests and then some some overseas at some point to bring on today we're going to talk about finding purpose of finding your true purpose. And we're also going to talk about love and love, maybe from a perspective that some people are not maybe not familiar with, right, because we have this to me, we have this word love in English, which is super generic. And we use it for all kinds of things. And I know like, I've heard I don't know this to be true, but I've heard that in, you know, languages like Persian, there are 85 different words for love. Right. And I know that you know, in other in other languages, there are many different words for love. So I might say for example, I love my children. And I might also say I love a hamburger, but I don't love them in the same way I hope. Right? Right. Exactly. Right. Um, so when I asked this question, I think of the the old you know, the old song What is love? Right, you know, from the Yeah, I did the Roxbury right yeah. I can't sing more than that or I'm gonna get in copyright trouble. So when we're talking about love what how do you describe it? How do you describe love? How do you talk about love from your from your sort of spiritual perspective of what that is?

Rebecca Quave 4:29

So anytime you hear me use the word love I'm not referring to the emotion love in any of its degrees, right? So not about a person that that you love and it's this intense emotional feeling. Or that you know, feeling of like you said of extreme like have a hamburger or pizza or whatever. Right. So because of the emotion, love has an Opposite, it can just as easily turn to dislike or hate, you know, anything on that spectrum. What I'm referring to is an energy that has no opposite, is boundless, is all encompassing, and is all embracing. And the way it acts is just in accordance with its nature. So what the love I'm referring to does, is it just loves, right, that's, it's not capable of anything else. So it always embraces and it it's a gateway to really everything that everyone's looking for. And this love people have such an innate yearning for that's so incredibly strong, that they spend their lives searching for anything that they think is going to be sort of a watered down facsimile of that right? And, and then are disappointed. But that yearning is so strong, it, it goes beyond even safety or survival, right, because if someone feels that they're so disconnected from having access to that level of what I'm describing as love, they'll take their own lives. Right? So the pain of believing that you are separate from that love, that pain of believing that you don't have access to that love, even though it's all pervasive, is intense, and is what really is at the root of so many experiences for people.

John Moore 6:41

Yeah, I mean, it's interesting that you mentioned that I know, I'm not a, I'm not a proponent or a strong believer in the concepts of the traditional concepts of heaven and hell. But there is a description of from somewhere, it's an old one of hell as being separate from the light or the love of God, right as being separated. And that is the ultimate torture, right? The ultimate state of human suffering is feeling separate from that all pervasive love. And that really, that sort of, really sort of rang true for me, in a way in my own life, where I discovered like, I was my own, I was my own jailer, I was my own capital. Yeah, I was the one who was creating those impediments. not consciously, necessarily, but my beliefs. Of

Rebecca Quave 7:40

course, no one would do it consciously. Oh, all pervasive all embracing boundless love with no opposite, oh, I'll just, I'll just throw that away. You just chuck that

John Moore 7:51

away and live in my ego forever. And suffer, you know, that. And there's, there's another word, you know, in my take, it might be synonymous, or you might have a different take on it. Or you might say, you don't care about that word at all. But there's another another word I like a whole lot, which is beingness. Which, for me, when, when I'm practicing, and when I'm when I'm trying to connect. I'm resting in this, this state of beingness, which is a little bit beyond description, but I will say that it is. It's a sense of stillness that has kind of an ultimate peace, but also that interconnectedness. And I'm wondering if you see a connection between words are so limited, right? It's hard to describe these huge, these huge, all encompassing concepts, in words. But I wonder if you see a connection between the concept of beingness and this, this love, I don't know, how would you? How would you eat? I realize I'm going off on like, 9 million tangents here. But how would you describe love? Would you describe it as a field? Would you describe it as? Or maybe it's beyond description? I don't know.

Rebecca Quave 9:17

Well, ultimately, it is all beyond description. But if we're going to use words and point in that direction, then there's absolutely a relationship because what you're describing is beingness. That's a great word to point two and represent that just innate presence that is nearness of you existing as the totality of what you are. And so love points to an aspect of them. Right, because love is that love is inherently what you are. Since there's excuse me, it says there's no way to separate from it.

John Moore 9:59

Yeah, I'm mean, right? You could not,

Rebecca Quave 10:03

you know, there's believing that you're separate from it, which of course brings what you describe that intense agony, you know?

John Moore 10:10

Right, right. And another another word sort of. And this is, this comes from my cosmology, for lack of a better term of my demonic practice. But we talk about the spirit as this undying, unborn incorruptible piece of ourselves that is, is never affected by external circumstances, it's never affected by our beliefs. It's never affected by our thoughts or injuries that happened to our body or any of those any of those things. Any again, like that idea, to me is hard to describe. I have you know, I, you know, we

Rebecca Quave 10:57

have because our whole language and our whole mind, and all of that is set up on opposites, right, it's set up in duality. So when you try to describe something that is changeless, that is beyond duality, then yeah, you'll run out of words.

John Moore 11:15

Great, right? It's hard language is. So language is so limited, but it's the tool. It's the tool we have. And there's the old, there's the old Zen saying that, you know, Bruce Lee made sort of famous that, you know, you can look at a finger pointing at the moon, but you're not looking at the moon. Right. And when you focus on the finger, you're focusing on a pointer. But you're not having the experience of gazing, gazing at the moon. And exactly, and I think that's sort of describing the limitations of symbols, right, symbols are powerful symbols are, you know, representational, but they're just representational. They're there in their, in their? That's, you know, that is the ultimate limit is that they aren't the experience. The the, you know, even the word experience doesn't seem quite, quite right. Here. Yeah. So if we're gonna have a podcast in which I get completely tongue tied, and I'm able to talk about the topic, deep and complex, but that's, you know, I think I, you know, I'm grasping what you're talking about, and I hope that it's, you know, it's becoming, it's becoming sort of clear. And so in your, in your work with people. And when you're teaching and that sort of thing, you're really trying to get people to identify with that love that they are at their core, or or is it something different? How would you describe that?

Rebecca Quave 12:50

Well, it's a process of exploration, right? The key component is curiosity. So what I see so often is people launch themselves into a spiritual path, that and it's really coming from the same places of expectation, and judgment and manipulation that they were doing before, right. So it becomes, oh, I have this new thing, that's going to make me feel better. And so I'm going to do it so I can feel better. And eventually, you're going to run into a certain limitation with that, right? It's going to, there's going to be a wall that you hit. Whereas when you're exploring from a place of curiosity, just for the sake of it, just because it's so alluring to you, and you leave behind the expectations about what your experience should be, or what you think this will produce, or what you think you'll find on the other side. That's when there's now finally enough open space and this fertile ground for what was there always right that changelessness to show itself to you. Right. So the process that people go through, and you know, you described it as reconnecting, and that's again, we're limited with words. Right. But it's Yeah, it's really just them becoming re aware of what's present. So it's a lot of questioning and exploring in a in a really open ended way. Because the point of the questions isn't an answer. It's you sort of letting yourself be pulled into the experience of that revealing itself.

John Moore 14:59

I really Love that

Rebecca Quave 15:00

that makes sense.

John Moore 15:02

Does it does and I really, I really love that because I am, my nature is super curious like I have, you know, I have probably donated a library full of books at some point that I personally owned and probably owned 1000s more that are taking up a good portion of my home. I'm always wanting to explore, and sort of learn, and particularly my spiritual bent is about, you know, going inside and learning and sort of learning what's there. And over this weekend, I taught an intro to shamanism class, which is, which is always fun. It's always fun, really to get new people to come to come in. And one of the things I like about shamanism is that it's a path of individual revelation, right? So I may be your teacher, because I'm teaching you a technique. But I can't tell you what that means for you what you get from that. I can't, I can't put my meaning and interpretation on top of that. And so I know because I've taught intro quite a lot. You know, people are they're going to journey they're going to have experiences, and they're going to come back and say, you know, this happened? Is that okay? Like? Of course, it's not for me to judge if that's okay, did you explore it with an open mind? Did you? Did you? Did it have a profound effect on you? And if it did, then fantastic. And if it didn't, fantastic, you know,

Rebecca Quave 16:39

well, and the flip side of that is people over emphasizing that, you know, peak experience or something, and letting their mind really latch on to it. And and look, right, everybody thinks that they're there after the what they expect is going to be instant gratification of the whole heavens opening and trumpet. Right? You know, everybody's kind of chasing that. And that's really not, you know, number one, it's not how it has to go for you. Everybody has their own way. So the second thing is that even if it happens that way, in this one moment, this one flash of everything, right, I can say from experience, it can then take years to integrate that, right. So there's never, there's never this instant way that people are expecting. And the emphasis doesn't really the experiences don't really matter at the end of the day, and experience is still just an experience. You know, what matters is? You know, and you're the only one that knows this is what's going on internally in you. And are you comfortable in your own skin in your world in, you know, in your experience? Or is there something else going on? Is there that push toward? Well, let's it needs to be something else. Right? That's at the end of the day, what matters,

John Moore 18:07

right? Yeah, I think I think the the author, I guess, shaunti, who's a meditation teacher, and pretty popular author. I wish I could remember the name of the book, I think he has a book that sort of talks exactly about that about having these peak meditation experiences. Even being on sort of the edge of what they consider enlightenment, and then kind of losing it for a while. Right and going going back because you're not always going to have

Rebecca Quave 18:36

Well, what seems like losing it, because what's happening is, it's this integration that has to happen. And that's what people tend to overlook, right? There's this expectation that you're going to hit some, you know, line that you cross that is the ultimate, and then that's how you're going to feel all the time as the way you felt in the throes of that experience. And that's just not what it's about.

John Moore 19:00

Right? You're gonna get a certificate to hang on your wall. William lines now

Rebecca Quave 19:05

certified, certified, whatever

John Moore 19:09

we're gonna give you like, yeah, we're gonna give you a colored belt to where and

Rebecca Quave 19:14

you see, you see how it is look at all of our systems and how they're set up to support that, because the mind really is comforted by that. Right? The ego wants to be told, this is your identity. And and because this is your identity, your now enough. And yeah, no matter what that identity is, you'll never actually feel like it's enough. Not really,

John Moore 19:40

for sure. And I think, I think part of that is this sort of Western patriarchal cultural pyramid scheme right where you have, you know, there has to be somebody at the top of the food chain, and you know, you work your way

Rebecca Quave 19:58

tell everyone else. What's what Maybe you could be that person. Yes. You just work harder to send

John Moore 20:03

more money, send more money, put it in the envelope and you will you will be right. You will experience a blessing right someday. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. And I get questions sometimes from, from students because, you know, my path is, you know, I, shamanism when I when I practice in a group I frequently the only male in the room, that's a very matriarchal system. It's very, you know, more feminine than traditional spirit, you know, spiritual systems, in my, in my view anyway. And I get questions, sometimes they're like, so what are the levels of, you know, what, there's no levels? Did you just practice you go, you know, train with a teacher here and train with a teacher there. And you just, you just practice? There's no levels? There's no, you know, exactly.

There's not a body stamping, you know, certificate. Although I think, you know, I do think some people have tried, I think there's some organizations out there. It's just not my thing, and power to anybody, and whatever they're doing, but it's just not my thing. I can't, I can't hack. It's not my

Rebecca Quave 21:17

Yeah, no, I get it. I same thing. I, I don't, I'm, you know, I operate outside of any particular, you know, tradition, yeah, method, whatever, whatever you would want to call it. Because it's, it's really about what everyone is, you know, and you don't need any particular structure for that. You know, you can you can and anything can be helpful to some degree, you know, right up until it's not sure, you know, if you were climbing a ladder to a to a second floor balcony, wouldn't really matter if you had a rope ladder, steel ladder, wooden ladder, any of that. The question is, would you just keep climbing up and down the ladder? For the sake of it? Because you got so attached to the liner? Or would you actually stand on the balcony and experience whatever was there that you were hoping the lion was going to give you this assist? You know, to reach?

John Moore 22:19

Yeah, but I

Rebecca Quave 22:20

see a lot of people just climbing up and down ladders really attached and married to the ladder.

John Moore 22:25

Right? I years ago, that's a great analogy. And I had years ago, I had a meditation teacher who told me meditation is like noticing you have a thorn in your finger. And then you pick another Thorn off the rosebush and pry the original Thorn out of your finger. Once the thorns out of your finger, you throw the second Thorn away, right, that's what you're supposed to do, you're supposed to take you know, once once this is once you're here, once you

Rebecca Quave 22:54

just keep poking yourself, don't just

John Moore 22:55

keep jabbing yourself with the thorny, you throw that away, you don't need it anymore. It's it's you know, but it you know, it is a lesson about attachment to methodology or, or that sort of thing. And I think that's an interesting segue into the other thing that we're going to talk about today, which is about finding your purpose, right? And really, if you're, if you're stuck in sort of rigid systems, or you're doing things habitually, without really kind of examining what you're doing, and not giving yourself the freedom to explore, and the freedom to experience different things. How, how could you possibly be following your true path? Your true will, right? How would you get it right? How would you get in touch with

Rebecca Quave 23:44

And currently, you know, in this moment in the world, there's tons of people who are about to be stepping forward in things that most people don't understand and won't understand. Right? And so it takes that that curiosity and then that that deep, deep clarity that's on a solid foundation of being rooted in that piece, and in that love that you are to be willing to step forward with it. No matter what the noise around it is, right? If regardless of anybody saying, I don't even know what that is, I don't even know what that means, right? Because that's the voices that go on in their head at first as well. When they come to me. They often times have kind of a sneaking suspicion about what some of their gifts are or what some of what they're like being asked to step forward with are but then there's all this other noise about what is that? How does that even look? How does that even show up? But we're at such a tipping point and such a transition point, that there's just there's going to be a lot of that there's going to be really valuable stuff that comes forward that people haven't ever heard of that doesn't make sense to people and that's the beauty of it right is that it is completely new so when people try to you know like pay their purpose from like a list of well you know we've got doctor lawyer firefighter and like well which one is it then they're going to come up empty handed because it's it's stuff is not already on the list

John Moore 25:25

absolutely absolutely it's it's like please describe yourself using a label that i'm that i'm comfortable with that i have right please cram yourself into a shoe box that i can put on my shelf somewhere so i can understand what it is about you i actually some frequently have difficulty answering the question which is a really common one is you know what do you do right

Rebecca Quave 25:52

i was about to say is like see you know me on a plane next to someone what do you do it's a different answer every time it's gonna come out in accordance with what they can understand like what it what their frame of reference is

John Moore 26:09

right absolutely absolutely do you ever do you ever just want to make something up i'm

Rebecca Quave 26:15

well i went through you know years and years ago gosh how old is my son now 20 so you know over 20 years ago before things you know opened up for me and change for me i would put just because i was a little bit of a smartass as well when i had to fill out forms because i was just at that time you know i had been a scientist before i was in genetics research but then i was staying home with him and when i had to fill out forms i would put i'm lactation engineer there you go that's what i felt i did most i spent so much time doing was nursing him 24 seven so rotation engineer and i would just watch people's faces with the form

John Moore 26:57

yeah yeah yeah it's you know it's in in and harmful ways it's fun to mess with people sometimes

Rebecca Quave 27:05

exactly no harm in that writing lactation engineer

John Moore 27:08

right and maybe you gave somebody a chuckle or or or a thought at some point maybe that's totally fine so if i were if i were somebody who you know i feel like i'm somebody who i'm maybe approaching some understanding of what my what my what i would consider my purpose like i'm i'm almost 50 and i'm getting to the point where stuff that doesn't make sense to me at all and i don't don't feel like it is coming from that place of love is falling by the wayside or if i pursue it obstacles you know the universe or whoever or you know places obstacles in my path to say you can go down

Unknown Speaker 27:59

so getting more aware of that natural alignment

John Moore 28:02

right right so there's this there's this alignment is is there you know if somebody were like gosh i don't even know i have no idea what my purpose is and i realized like i'm not asking you to condense everything you do with everyone into you know the remaining minutes of this podcast but where would somebody begin where would somebody sort of start to suss out you know i just feel like i'm stuck i feel like there has to be more in life i feel like i'm not you know i'm not operating from that place of that place of love identification how would one begin

Rebecca Quave 28:42

yeah so first of all with what you said of operating from that place of love identification that's really the primary purpose right that everyone has is to experience what it is to within this place of duality and physicality to to be aware of that simultaneously right that's what on a fundamental level everyone's come here to have the opportunity to experience so because inherently we all know what it's like to be 1,000% aware of that all the time that's what that's what our true being is is all about right so however to condense yourself into this extreme you know duality and limitation and and density of the physical world as as it exists currently and be aware of that is then this really new unique amazing experience isn't it so it gives it brings a whole new depth to our understanding of the flavor of that love right when we've now experienced it even through the limitation even through the density even through the physicality. So just to kind of throw that out there, that's really everyone's purpose. Then what gets layered on top of that the way that we, so everyone how I say and speak to this. So simultaneously, there's this universality to everything, right, and this oneness to everything. And that includes every every body. And then superimposed on that is everyone is this completely unique facet of this, you know, Kaleidoscope and, or the way I often describe it is like a symphony. You, you have this one sort of music that's coming out of this Symphony, that's incredibly beautiful. But you have all different instruments, and even amongst those instruments, the instruments are playing different notes, right. And that's what makes the symphony beautiful. So even though it's there is this oneness because it's producing this one music. It sounds different, and we appreciate it more than we do. If we hear one flute playing one note, and never changing. Right, right. So so then. So on top of that overall purpose that I just described, everyone is then here to bring their unique singular note through their particular instrument. And if they don't, then it's not this incredible Symphony, right? It's going to be, it's going to be dull, it's going to be off key, something's going to be interesting. So as far as them starting to connect with that, and your questions are, is to start at the center of their heart? Because they do know, there's nobody who doesn't know, there's nobody who doesn't have answers for themselves. It's just a matter of, are you listening? Are you aware? Are you letting it come through? Are you willing to connect with it? And does it scare you? Right? And do you have lots of other noise, you know, piled up around it, that now needs to be resolved. Because in the center of your heart, you know, there's something that you've all along been drawn to, and you've pushed it away in for dotnet.

John Moore 32:27

I would absolutely concur with that, and I love your, I love your analogy of the symphony, I'm gonna steal that I promise, I will give you credit for it. I will remember to say where I got it from, I'm gonna, but I'm gonna use that. And the other thing you mentioned, which I think would might be helpful to touch on, too is the noise that creeps up around this right? And that is that plays really well, on, you know, talking about the symphony, there is a lot of noise. And the noise can be our own noise, we create our own noise, right, from our past experiences from the culture that we impress with. And then there's a there's an awful lot of noise that comes from sort of x externally as well. And I'm thinking of a question,

Rebecca Quave 33:20

ultimately, then all the same noise.

John Moore 33:23

Yes, yeah. It's

Rebecca Quave 33:24

even the external noise. is the only thing bothersome or not to you about the external noise is if you have a reaction to okay. Yeah, right. Yeah, to two different people, the same external noise, one of them is not even going to notice it. And the other one is going to be deeply impacted by it.

John Moore 33:45

Yes, absolutely. I was thinking, I was thinking specifically of this client I had recently who is an amazing artists. And his work is profoundly spiritual, like I, you know, I'm not an expert in art. But when I look at this person's art, I am affected by it myself. So I know I'm like, Wow, that's amazing. And, you know, his thing was, I have a lot of haters out there. were like, how dare you put this out in this way? And do this and do that? And, you know, all of those things, and you're absolutely right, the thing that was holding him back was that he was taking that stuff on. And especially if, if anything you do involves stepping out into public into the public eye. There's gonna be that, that noise on it. And my, sort of my take on it was, well, you know, do you think what you have to share is more important, impactful and loving to the world than what the haters have to share with you. than the haters shutting you down. Or do you think do you think the haters shutting you down is more important than you sharing this profound art with the world and it sort of I think it like clicked in at that point. And like he, he realized that like, this is what I'm here to do this is my, this is my purpose is to share this share this stuff. And the way that I do that is with art kind of thing. And that's not to say, necessarily that anybody's true purpose has to be stepping into the public eye. Right? It could be could be anything.

Rebecca Quave 35:26

Exactly, exactly. So for some people, the the acceptance that they have to come to, you know, maybe their ego has been very fixated on that that's the only way to make a difference. Right. And their process is to find out that it's that it's not that right, that they're more seemingly behind the scenes, and that that has the exact same value. Yeah, so what you said about the person taking on I think, is the way you put it, what was coming from the haters, you know, when that happens, what's going on is what they're saying, has a resonance with what's unresolved in him. So for everybody, regardless of whether it looks like what's going on is internal is external, it's coming from society, it's coming from a loved one that's coming from a family member, any of that the exploration is to go deeply to the root of what interacts with that, and and resolve it. Because once that's fully resolved, then it completely changes.

John Moore 36:29

Right? Yeah, it doesn't, it doesn't matter anymore. I'm, you know, and I'm thinking of my, my daughters, when they were little, they would come home from school, and they would be upset, and you know, somebody, somebody said, Oh, you're stupid, or something along those lines, they would be upset about that. And I said, Well, you know, are you stupid? Is that a true thing? And they're like, no. And I would say, Well, why are you upset that that somebody? And I understand. And I like I did understand that? You know, social approval is really important that those ages, but it's trying to point out the sort of the folly of the situation. I said, so I said, are you? Are you a chair? And my daughter would say, No, I'm not a chair. So if I called you a chair, would that make you upset? Because it's not true about you, right? And then Oh, okay. And then it was, it would sort of, it would sort of it would sort of click, and I knew that it was about sort of pure disapproval. However, I wanted them to see the folly of of the, the folly of that of, you know, somebody calling you something and not, not hopefully taking that on board, especially at an early age where that's going to creep up later in life, where if you, the more you sort of buy into these messages that you are somehow broken or,

Rebecca Quave 37:57

exactly, because that's what it comes down to right, it comes down to that awareness of love, right, and that awareness of your own access to love in any moment. So the reason she had a different reaction to someone calling her stupid than and I'll just speak generally, right, because I don't know her experience in particular, that generally someone has a reaction to someone calling them stupid versus someone calling them a chair, is that there's no judgment about will that if I'm a chair, I then won't have access to love. Right? There's judgement about if I am stupid, I won't have access to love. So your whole system is on guard against having any identity that is on the list of if you're this, you don't have access to love. Right. So even though she knew as you helped her help point out to her she rationally knew she wasn't stupid, that that part underneath that's looking to always protect her and and be on guard for her and try to make sure she has access to love said, Oh, wait a minute, what stupid stupid is on the list of if I'm that identity, I won't have access to love anymore. And of course, there's not going to be the same reaction for a chair because we don't have that kind of judgment against it. Right. So ultimately, that's what's going on so deeply with people just across the board, whether about in relation to that willingness to step out and their purpose or just the seemingly smallest day to day moment to moment interactions with people is there's this whole system that's built around protecting you to say, do I do I make sure that you're this certain identity to ensure that you'll have access to love?

John Moore 39:45

Yes, that's that is. I think that's for me. That's the point of the day right there. Right? It's that. Yeah, I need to fit myself into this mold. That equals deserving of love. In in order to in order to have access to that

Rebecca Quave 40:02

or even that even that concept of being deserving of love right is is inherently part of that whole system because remember love just loves there's no deserving it there's no earning it there's no being worthy of it there's none of that and so even all of that is just built from this place of that initial agony that initial belief that says that we're somehow separate from it and so it builds all of these crazy ideas about well how do i get back to it well i'll earn it i'll deserve it all

John Moore 40:31

right no right right yeah i i borrowed a practice i think from eckhart tolay and it's been an important part of just my personal practice on a daily basis and of course COVID has really changed how many people i interact with on a regular daily basis and i'm an incredibly social person so i hopefully you know fingers crossed we get through this soon but as a mountain about with with people you know interacting with somebody at a grocery store for example they're they're ringing up my groceries or something i'm i'm making up effort to give that person at least a few moments of just absolute presence right and recognize just you know whether it's eye contact or through words or just hold the feeling in my heart that this is a this is a human being and you know this is a human being i need to give them they you know there's that word deserving just from the fact that they exist they deserve my presence and my and my love and it's something that i've tried to instill in students and and my children and that sort of thing and it i don't know if it makes i don't know how much of a difference it makes in the lives of the people i interact with but it makes a big difference in my life right because ultimately they're you know people interact with the reflections of me and if if i treat them if i treat everybody i interact with as equally deserving of love that i'm included in that circle right i'm included in the source of compassion and love like i deserve that too because it is my norm that every being that exists is equally deserving of existing and love

Rebecca Quave 42:32

yeah and that they do right and so what happens when you decide to step into operating that way like you just described for you to be completely open and present to offer that to your interaction it means that you're completely open and present

John Moore 42:53

right

Rebecca Quave 42:54

right which yeah so a question i often give to people and i think i'm not sure if i gave you this link for it's a it's a little i don't know if you'd call it a meditation or what but it all hinges on the question does love love this and it's not even about getting a yes or no or any other answer it's just using that question as an opening to let love show you

John Moore 43:35

i want to say i love that i do love that and i love inquiry as a form of spirit spiritual practice and i think that i'm gonna i'm gonna give that a try because that sounds definitely and

Rebecca Quave 43:52

it's just so simple it's something people you know we've reported back to me that they if they carry it through their lives and it applies to everything so what you would call external and even what you will call internal so if somebody has had a big judgment about their own grief or their own fear and been long on a spiritual path to you know purge themselves of all of that or whatever and get rid of it all it brings a completely different curiosity to okay so my frustration arises my fear arises my grief arises does love love it

and you find out right or it's a situation you're presented with is love love this or an aspect of yourself you know for some people they they look in the mirror and they don't like what they see and the question is does love love this or are there some aspects of their identity that they don't like or a behavior or habit they've been fighting up down inside Ways to, quote get enough motivation and willpower to break, which never works, not in a sustainable lasting way. And so that's the question does love love this? And does love love me? Even when I'm in the midst of this?

John Moore 45:17

I think,

Rebecca Quave 45:18

ultimately, right, the reason they want to break the habit is because they think the habit gives them a certain identity. And if they have the break it then they're going to have a different identity that they've judged as has more access to. All right, so it always just comes back through that thread.

John Moore 45:33

Right? Right. Um, yeah, I'm just from talking to you. I'm feeling I'm feeling more open and I'm feeling you know, just pondering the question in my brain. So I think that's, so first, I want to thank you for that. for that. That question that practice of inquiry, I just, I think that's beautiful. does love love this, I'm gonna, I am gonna practice that I'm gonna take, I'm gonna take that on. Challenge accepted, I guess?

Rebecca Quave 46:05

Well, like I said, it's just, it's about that light, easy, gentle curiosity, that's, that's really fun, and becomes really joyful and just takes on a life of its own. And it's about the depths of what reveals itself to you when you do that. And at the same time, you know, if your mind is going to be occupied and busy with something, you know, let it let it have a question like that. So and that's the, by the way, another thing that people get very locked up in that I see over and over again, is the battle against the mind the battle against the ego. And most people's minds need a real, there's a there's a bit of making up to do and bringing flowers and reconciliation, because they've been in such battle, right? How often do you hear somebody, oh, my mind just trips me up. My mind ruins it for me, my mind won't shut up. And they've been trying to silence it and shut it down. And is there a silence? And like you said before that total stillness that's available for us? Yes. But it's, it's, it doesn't care about if the mind is making noise or not. Right, you know, so the mind doesn't have to be like, shut down and destroyed. It has to be embraced and loved and understood, for what its purpose actually is. And, and, and be allowed to fulfill that purpose in an appreciated way. And then when, when that's what it has, when it's completely loved and appreciated and acknowledged for what it does know how to do, then it doesn't take on these extra burdens of I'm meant to protect you and organize your whole life and and answer all the big questions for you, which of course it isn't capable of. Right? So then it's then it gets quiet on its own. Because it's noise was really just motivated by these underlying things.

John Moore 48:08

It's, it's interesting that you mention that when I, sometimes I teach meditation, and the number one thing I get is, I can't meditate because I can't I can't stop my thoughts. And my answer to that is, congratulations, you're alive. And I guess I'm sorry that you're not the Buddha yet. But you know, they'll quiet on their own you don't

Rebecca Quave 48:37

but if you look through even that story, right as an example of the Buddha, he didn't get there by force rolling gets there by force. Right,

John Moore 48:45

right.

Rebecca Quave 48:47

By control regulation, you more of the same old same turn

John Moore 48:51

of the crank and tighter and tighter. I'm gonna push those thoughts out of my head really hard.

Rebecca Quave 48:57

Yeah, this is a thought.

John Moore 49:00

It's a thought and it doesn't work. It's Yeah, yeah. And the thing is, it's meant in my, in my experience, in my experience, there is a resting and being this arresting in love. There's a rare that that happens, and you start to like, stuff like that. I can't stop my thoughts stops to matter. And then they quiet down on their own. But it stops it it is about this concept, how things should be. Right. This is how it should be. This is how it's supposed to be.

Rebecca Quave 49:40

Yeah, expectation is the number one obstacle.

John Moore 49:44

Yeah, yeah. That's gonna w my next project, how to figure out how to get people to let go of expectation. That'll just Well,

Rebecca Quave 49:54

it's just the same as everything else. Right. You, you acknowledge that expectation is there, and you get really curious about what the root of it is. Right, and why you're attached to it. And somewhere down along that line, you'll find that there's, there's the idea that I have to have this expectation, because of the judgments I have about what will give me access to love and won't give me access to loan.

John Moore 50:25

Well, absolutely fantastic. Um, I feel like I could talk to you for 10 more hours, just on this topic alone, but I feel like we're, we're well, I don't feel like we're, you know, my, my external reality tells me that, that it's time to it's time to wrap up. Um, it's been really fantastic. And I want to thank you for coming on. And I know that I have gotten a lot out of this conversation. And if, if my listeners were to want to contact you and find out more about what you've you've got going on, I'm definitely I will add links in the in the show notes and that sort of thing. But how would How would I find out more about you were, were so inclined.

Rebecca Quave 51:13

Yeah, well, you can just turn up to my website, which is RebeccaQuave.com. There's, I do have an account on Instagram and on Facebook, you know, you could search me on those are not, you know, it's they're intermittently active. So if you expect to be flooded, influencer style, continuous posting or something, that's, that's not what you'll find there. If you're okay, with sort of a flow of things arising when they arise, then then it'll be

John Moore 51:53

nice. And do you have? Do you have a mailing list on your website? If I wanted to sign up for a mailing list of some sort? Yeah,

Rebecca Quave 51:59

for sure. So right on my homepage, you can actually you'll see the does love, love this ebook, right on the homepage, and there's a little forum that you can put in your, and that'll, that'll connect you to what I call love notes. where, again, it's just intermittently sent out reminders, and if there's announcements about whatever's going on, and then there's also I think I gave you the link for the it's a little more in depth, which is the truth about love, sort of three part gift.

John Moore 52:35

So I will I will definitely add all of those links to the show notes. Thank you so much, again, for coming on. This has been lovely and enlightening. And you know, hopefully we can we can talk again sometime soon.

Rebecca Quave 52:51

You're so welcome. It's been it's been a real delight. And I would absolutely love to just let me know.

John Moore 53:00

Fantastic. And here's here's our outro

Announcer 53:31

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