Ep41 Spiritual Egotism and Spiritual Inclusion

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 0:45

Hello, everybody.

It's been a little while. It's been almost a month since I put one of these out. as I record this, it is the morning of New Year's Eve 2021. Whenever you happen to listen to this, this is what I'm recording it. And we've just gotten through a very busy, busy, busy holiday season for me. I celebrate both you will and Christmas, I don't identify as a Christian, but Christmas is has become a holiday open to everyone. And I like that I like aspects of it. I love some of the messages of Christmas, not the rampant consumerism. But I do love gift giving. And I like eating, I love eating a lot. Maybe I'll do a maybe I'll do a whole episode on the spiritual nature of food and feasting and making food offerings and that sort of thing sometime in the future. So anyway, so celebrate, you'll you know, and Hanukkah was earlier than that. And Diwali was earlier than that I don't celebrate all of those. But I recognize that we have been through a busy holiday season. And in most areas of the world. COVID is surging, we've got this omachron variant, and it's a very serious thing. And a lot of people are winding up in the hospital and our hospitals are getting overwhelmed. And now they're canceling. A lot of them are canceling non emergency services because they're or non emergency. Yeah, non emergency services like surgeries and things like that, because they're just completely overwhelmed. And health care workers are, um, you know, health, health care workers are overwhelmed and tired. And honestly, I feel for them what they've had to put up with for years now. Gosh, so I'm hoping to, in the new year bring a little bit of a message of hope. But something that's a little, I hope it's a little bit unusual for this podcast is I've got a little bit of a bone to pick, I've got a little bit of a complaint, and I don't love complaining, complaining is not the most fun thing I do, and I don't love it. But I have a little bit of a complaint. But the caveat is that I will also potentially offer a solution. So, you know, in my, in my 20 years of working in the technology field, I would you know, always try to if a problem came up, and I had to go to a manager or something. Whenever possible, I would always try to come with a proposed solution and sort of say, okay, you know, XYZ is a problem, and this is how I think we could fix it. Or I would come with a problem and ask for help. Like XYZ is a problem. I don't know how to fix it. Do you know who I can go to for some more help? Because then I'm not just a complainer I become part of the solution. And so I'm going to challenge everybody listening to this podcast and I hope that you will challenge people who don't listen this podcast to be part of the solution to whatever is going on in the world and that includes COVID That includes paying attention. I know people have strong feelings for or against but I would encourage people to get vaccinated, fully vaccinated and boosted I am fully vaccinated and boosted even though I do firmly believe in spiritual healing and I believe in taking care of your body and all of those things. I do think that I do think that the vaccine, the vaccines are safe, I believe they're, you know, fully tested and approved, I think every anti Vax argument I have seen, is not has not borne truth. And I realize people are really strongly attached to their opinion. And I may be talking to people who are not going to shift their opinion at all about this. But if you look with a critical eye, and I'm, I'm, you know, while I'm a spiritual person, I'm also very scientifically minded.

And anecdotal evidence is not good. It's not evidence of anything. You know, my, my grandmother smoked her whole life and lived to be 90 does not mean that smoking is good for you, or that it doesn't kill at least a third of the people who do it, because it does. And that's the reality of it. And there is survivorship bias. Early on in the pandemic, I had a very mild case of what I think, was COVID, because I lost my sense of taste and smell. And, you know, it wasn't bad I had, it was like a cold for several weeks and isolated. And I couldn't get tested at that time, because I didn't have any comorbidities and there weren't. They weren't testing people who weren't older, there were no at home tests back then. The test that they had, were the ones where they had to like, Ram the Q tip all the way back and practically touch your brain with it. So I wasn't looking forward to getting that. So unless I was incredibly sick, so I didn't get tested. But I think I had it very early on. And it was extremely mild. And I know people who have contracted COVID scents and had have had extremely mild symptoms. Although I do know, people whose sense of taste and smell have not recovered months later. And for me, it would be a bad thing to lose. I have a very keen sense of smell. And as I spoke to earlier, I love tastes. So anyway, there is this survivorship bias where I go, I went through that I'm fine. You know, it's not it's no big deal. Um, you know, it's that whole thing. Like, we didn't wear seatbelts when I was a kid and I turned out fine. Yeah, but that ignores the, you know, 800,000 people in the US closing on a million people in the US who have died of COVID closing on a million people. So, any inkling that you have that this thing is not serious. And the other the other aspect is, you know, am I worried that if I got COVID that I would get, you know, extremely sick wind up in the hospital or die? Probably not. I'm a fairly healthy person. Um, you know, I'm getting up there in age, but I'm not, you know, I'm not over 60. And, um, you know, so the risk factors for me are very low. But there is a lot of thinking these days that are like, well, I don't have anything to worry about. So why do I got to do this? Um, you know, the main reason I got fully vaccinated and got boosted, besides the fact that I don't want to have to quarantine if I, you know, by getting sick, or, you know, God forbid, I do get seriously ill and want and take up a hospital bed somewhere. But I believe it's my civic duty, I believe that I'm a stop gap. And that being vaccinated and boosted makes it much, much less likely that I can tract and pass the disease on to others, and I'm still taking precautions, I do still wear a mask. And I realize people have strong feelings about that too. But when I go out in public, and I'm in an enclosed space with people, I still wear a mask, I still socially distance from people because those things I believe, are still relevant and important. And, you know, anyway, that's all I want to talk about that. That's my PSA for that. So, anyway, I would encourage you to if you're, you know, I can't imagine they're too many people on the fence these days. If you are at all on the fence, you know, just just get, get better information, get good information, not people joining on social media or silly blogs or crazy YouTube channels or politicians. Don't listen to any of us people. Please listen to the people who work in epidemiology. You know, there's this other thing that's going around that is surprising and shocking to me that I think that, you know, people think their quote unquote, common sense, whatever that means, out does expertise of people who have spent decades studying in a specific field? And I got news for you, it doesn't? It does not, it never does. You know, I realized there's this thing where people are bumping up against these experts who are changing their recommendations pretty frequently. And that's frustrating.

But that's what science does. And that doesn't make science wrong. Science is is the scientific method. Science is a method. It's not a, you know, we speak of science as if it's a thing. But it's a method of trying to figure out what is more effective, what is more truthful, statement. And, you know, science is supposed to be self correcting, right? Meaning when we get new information, we change our mind about something, you know, as better information gets in, and I realized it's really difficult, it's difficult for me as a lay person to keep up with the shifting recommendations. And very recently, my kids and I were exposed to somebody who turned out to be diagnosed with COVID. Later, he was not symptomatic at the time that we are exposed to him. And I didn't know what to do. And I read the CDC guidelines, and they were confusing. And what I did was I wound up calling the, you know, my kids doctor's office. And they had, they had recommendations based on my kids vaccination status, and the time of exposure and all of those things. And so if you have questions, rely on the people who know more about things than you do, that's another thing that I like, is relying on experts. Anyway, I've been talking a very long time about COVID. And that is not the main topic of this, I really, I really want this pandemic to be over. And the only way we're going to get there is if people start taking responsibility not just for themselves, but for their neighbors. It's not me first, it's we first. That's my PSA for today. So the thing I want to talk about, and I realize I'm starting with certain all kinds of negativity, but I'm going to give some suggestions. Because, again, they don't like to present a problem with out some kind of solution, particularly on this podcast, more have time to think about a little bit what I'm going to talk about, these are very impromptu, I don't script them. I don't, I don't edit them. So you're getting the pure unfiltered me when I take a sip of coffee. So we'll do right now. You'll hear that, or if I cough or sneeze, or God forbid, pass gas, you might hear that I try not to be that rude or whatever. But I want you to have sort of unfiltered unfiltered me, not because that is more valuable than filtered me or whatever. But I feel like this is a way that I connect with people and that I'm not being fake. I'm not pretending I'm not putting on my best face. Now, in other public appearances. I might do that. You know, I, you know, I do radio spots once a week here in Maine, and you know, they edit them, they put them through filters, and I've only heard myself one time. And on the radio, I was like, wow, that's me, I sound pretty good. It's because they do a whole lot of editing, and cut out my arms and ORs and cut out things I say that might not make sense in that that kind of thing. Well, I don't do that here. And I realize, you know, different people are gonna have different tastes different people are going to like my voice or hate my voice and that's totally fine. And you may like what I have to say or hate what I've seen, that's totally fine, too. Everybody is entitled to their opinion, which is gonna start me off on something. And yeah, people are entitled to their opinions. But there's something the thing that the thing that kind of set me off and this is the thing I have a complaint about was very recently on social media and social media is a bit of a jungle, right? Sometimes you can get good things from social media, you can find out about wonderful podcasts or what have you. And sometimes it is a garbage pit or cesspit of infighting and insults and political junk and all kinds of stuff but You take the good with the bad, I guess. So very recently on social media, a person and I won't name this person or really indicate who they are, because it's not my intention to attack anybody personally. What I'm going to do is I'm going to challenge an idea. Am Yes, he's entitled to his opinion. And as am I, I'm entitled to my opinion about his opinion. And I'm about and I'm entitled to my opinion about how he expresses his opinion as well.

So there's something that is sort of rife in the spiritual community. And it doesn't matter what part of the spiritual community it is. But it's this form of spiritual egotism. Um, and it is the farthest thing from being spiritual I can imagine. It is, in my opinion, destructive. It puts people in boxes, it separates us more than unites us, makes us feel disconnected. It makes us feel less than so the thing the opinion that was shared on social media recently, it was a somebody shared an article where a an Eastern traditional Shaman was speaking about the challenges they went through, and they didn't want to be a shaman and XYZ and that is a very common story in shamanic cultures. shamanic crisis is a real thing many people go through. You know, in indigenous cultures, they have to go through very serious maybe a life threatening crisis. And spirit chooses them. And that happens, happens in the West too. But we don't tend to live in shamanic cultures unless you live in an indigenous culture in the West. So this person who is a teacher of shamanism said, Hey, look at this, all these Westerners and this person is a westerner who teaches shamanism. They're all crazy. Already, starting with a pejorative, calling people crazy. I don't like that. I'm sorry, I don't like the way you're expressing your opinion. putting people down. And putting people below you, I'm better than you because you're crazy. You're crazy, because you don't know where everybody's running to become a shaman. And nobody knows what it means to be a shaman and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You can tell how I feel about this person's opinion. And he's entitled to it, but I don't like it. And I don't like the way he expressed it. I don't like it. It is not. It is not a very, I'm trying not to be judgmental, but I'm going to come across as very judgmental. So it's just gonna happen, I'm just going to accept it. I'm gonna accept that my judgment is coming up. And that is egoic on my part, I get it. But you know, I don't like this putting other people down this separating people out. You can't be a shaman because you don't meet these five random criteria that I have decided are the most important. And if you interviewed people, if you went to 100 Different shamanic cultures, traditional indigenous shamanic cultures, and said, What? What is required to become a shaman? In your culture, you would get 100 different completely different answers, there would be some similarities, there would be completely different answers. So yeah, could I go out and cherry pick one person's opinion and decide I can use that to put down and insult other people from my own culture? who are trying to do the same things that I'm doing? I could do that. I don't think that's a very positive way of acting. I don't think that's helpful. I don't think it's beneficial. I don't think it is doing anything other than I am superior to you because you want to be a shaman and you and I know what it takes and you don't. Again, that's about separation. And in my shamanic practice, I learned that we are all connected. So when I see this opinion come out, it hurts because I feel deeply connected to people who are in the shamanic community. And when we'll put it this way, when I have misspoken I put out something recently Li, on my blog about shamanism. And I and I misstated something I stated something that gave the wrong impression. It was not intentional. And it wasn't technically a lie, it was just

I said something in a way that I shouldn't have said it. And my teacher read it and contacted me immediately and said, um, you know, love your blog. I noticed that this, you said this. And that's not exactly true. And, you know, you might want to change that. And I did, because she was right. And I had not intended it to come across the way that it did. But I'm a human being and I made a mistake, and I fixed it. So I want people to fix stuff. And there's a thing that is going on in the spiritual community. This spiritual egotism, that's one aspect of it, where you're crazy, because you want to be a shaman, how about we educate people, and by educating people, if you start off by calling them crazy, um, you know, I have, I have decades of experience educating adults. I don't have experience, educating children, but I've taught adults for decades martial arts and shamanism and technology. And I wrote a technology textbook and when you start off by insulting your audience, to make yourself seem better, um, you lose your audience. They shut down, you cannot educate them. So when you say, you know, all you Westerners who want to be shamans are crazy. Um, you're not trying to educate people. You're trying to insult people, or you're trying to get people, people on, you know, who who read, you know, hold hold you in some esteem to go oh, oh, I, I didn't realize that all these other people. They're crazy. But I'm following you. So I'm an insider. And those are crazy people. I'm saying because I follow. I follow you. I don't like that. Um, and the other thing, so there's kind of two complaints here. And then I promise I'm going to get to my proposed solution. Something I would like to see. The other thing that that I see happening a whole lot are gatekeepers, gatekeepers of culture. And, you know, I've run into this, and I was teaching a workshop in shamanism a couple years back maybe three years ago. Time sort of weird now that we're we've been in COVID for so long. So as probably three years ago, I was teaching an introductory workshop and shamanism and there was a flyer and some posts online about it. And in there was a picture of a hoop drum that I use for shamanic journeying. And a gentleman and I now know this guy and I, I respect his intention, but I think he went about this the wrong way, contacted me out of the blue and said, Are you some kind of scam artist? And I'm like, I don't know what you're talking about. Is and he, you know, going back and forth. He thought I was pretending to teach Native American spirituality. And I do not and I make it very clear that that is not something I have expertise in. It's not something I teach, and it's not something that I represent that I teach. So because this person has certain biases, he feels like shamanism is a Native American practice. I will say that many Native American tribes have people who are shamanic, so there are many shamanic cultures but shamanic cultures exist all over the world. And he said, You have no right to use that drum. It's not yours. It's not from your culture. Bs. But it's just ignorance. It's just that he didn't know because he has only seen hoop drums in context of Native Americans using them. And despite the fact that I actually made my hoop drum in a drum burning ceremony with A Native American teacher

I do come from cultures where the hoop drum is common and that is almost every culture many many many many cultures use hoop drums they are prehistoric instruments there are no there are probably no existing cultures that invented the hoop drum right. So, you know, this has been passed along human culture to human culture. And you know, my ancestors in you know, my Celtic ancestors used hoop drums still do as a matter of fact, you see a Baran which is a traditional Irish instrument, that is a hoop drum. My Scandinavian ancestors used hoop drums, Scandinavian shaman Saamy, shamans and Scandinavian shamans still do use hoop drums. Hoop drums are everywhere. We see them in many different continents, we see them amongst many different cultures, they are again, prehistoric things. It's like saying, because I've only watched westerns, Western movies, that I believe that Native American culture was the only culture to use a bow and arrow. And that is far from true. Right? We know that bow and arrow was in common use in cultures everywhere. You know, Welsh longbowmen were feared in the Middle Ages, and, you know, bows, bows and arrows commonly used in Asia. And so yeah, it's an ancient, you know, it's an ancient tool. It's adapted for different cultures. But um, so my, my issue with kind of both of these things is that and I'll talk, I'm gonna talk about cultural appropriation and when it's actually a problem, and there's a great article I read recently about cultural appropriation, and I will, I will, I'll talk about that in a moment. So my main problem with both of these things is that they're saying, because of the circumstances of your birth, or history, or upbringing, or whatever, you are not eligible to have spiritual healing or spiritual wholeness, or to follow the spiritual path that you are interested in. And we're living in a world that is so difficult and so challenging. Kind of No, my feeling is a little I'm a little indignant. I'm a little How dare you? How dare you tell people they can't seek out spiritual wholeness? Know, people might be doing it in a way that is not helpful or harmful or what, whatever. But if you just call people crazy, and offer no solution, or if you just say you can't do that, because you're a fraud, and you're stealing. You're not offering a solution, not offering any kind of solution that's not helpful to anyone. Um, and cultural appropriation has become a really sticky term, and somebody told me oh, you can't use the word shaman because that's not your word. What do you mean that's not my word? Shaman is an English word. Yes, it came into English from other another language in the 17th century. But how many of our words come from French in English come from French or Spanish or Latin or Greek? Most of the, you know, a good portion of the English language is not old does not directly descend from Old English. And the word shaman shows up. It's a proto indo Europe. It comes from a proto indo European root word. And it shows up in Sanskrit and Chinese and Pali it shows up in Acadian it shows up in certain form in Hebrew. So let's get off the kick that the the toxic people and I'm not taking anything away from them of Siberia.

These you know that they in invented the word shaman out of whole cloth that it didn't exist before they started using the word. It's not true. And when people challenge me, you know, I try to educate them. I don't, I don't try to get into an argument with them. Even though it sounds like I'm being argumentative now. I challenge them and present them with hopefully better information. Will that change some people's minds? No, no, you know, it's very clear that there are a large group of people in the world who are not affected by facts are not affected by newer, better information once I have dug in my opinion, is my opinion. You people are crazy. You can't do this, because you're crazy. And I have deemed that you're crazy. And indigenous people think you're crazy. Really, you speak on behalf of all indigenous people. The other phenomenon I see quite a bit is these gatekeepers who are like you can't do X because it is a closed practice. Um, this one is a little challenging to, and I'll give you an example, somebody very recently said, You shouldn't smudge or use the word smudge. Because that is a Native American practice. And it's a closed practice. Let me tell you how many problems I have with that statement. And again, it's, you know, when, when I hear stuff like that, I respond to it, hopefully from a factual perspective and say, well, that's not exactly true. First of all, the word Smudge is not a Native American word. You know. So, to say that the word comes from Native American culture, as if Native American culture is a single culture. And as if there is a single language, none of those things are true. And even if the word smudge came from, you know, the Wabanaki or something, um, it would not belong to every Native American culture. But let's look at the act of smudging the act of using, you know, burning herbs to purify or for spiritual purposes or for healing. I cannot think of a culture that doesn't do that. Via Egyptians, the ancient Egyptians did that there are recipes I've made. I've made Kaifi which is incense made from resins and herbs, I've, I've made that and that was on the written out on you know, the walls of King Tut's tomb. So, um, you know, and in Scottish culture, there's a practice, I think it's called staining and they use rosemary to smudge they burn it and use it to for spiritual purification and healing. So, the, you know, so the problem number one is to say, x practice belongs to X culture is very frequently untrue. There are, you know, there are exceptions to that. I've read things were saying, oh, you know, white people shouldn't practice voodoo, because that comes from Haiti, and it's only you know, people who are of Haitian descent or whatever. But there are practitioners out there from Haiti who will teach Caucasian people, people from other cultures and don't have a problem sharing their religion, their spirituality with other people. Um, so are they are they wrong? Who, who gets to be right here? So here's the other problem. And this is something that I I read from somebody who is actually a Native American who's talking about this, like, somebody asked them, Is it okay to smudge and they said, Why are you asking me? Because there is no one person. Like you could ask. You could go to 10 Native American people, 10 different tribes, maybe or even 10 people within the same tribe and say, Is it okay to smudge and you might get 10 different answers, or you might get two or three different answers. Because nobody owns culture. Nobody owns

you know, cultural practice and this was the thing that was expressed. She was like, well Whether I have a problem with it or not, it's not mine to give or take. Now there's a couple. This is where cultural appropriation becomes a, an actual problem, right? Problem number one is when it becomes exploitive, right? And so for example, I do not, I do smudge, I frequently I will use rosemary very frequently, I like the smell a whole lot. I don't use white sage. And the reason for that is not because only people born in a certain area to certain parents are allowed to use white sage. Um, but I only use white sage to be I don't use white sage sorry, because it is a traditional in many Native American tribes, it is traditional smudging herb, and it has been over harvested by people selling it in spiritual shops. And because merging has become so popular, you know, people are, are are encroaching on traditional Native harvesting grounds. And that's exploitive. Right, that's exploitive? If I were to teach shamanism. And let's say I put an Apache Warbonnet on falsely presenting myself as teaching something from that culture. And essentially taking away from that culture that is both exploitive and disrespectful, so would not do that. And this is where appropriation is actually problematic. Where appropriation is not problematic, is saying, oh, you know, I really, I really respect, I really respect that part of your culture, I want to learn more about it, I want to experience it from somebody who's willing to share it. For example, I have taken part in a pipe ceremony with somebody who is a pipe carrier and pipe carriers are selected. And I don't know, the whole the whole deal. But I was honored to take part in a pipe ceremony, would I now go out and lead a pipe ceremony? I would not, because I have not been that has not been passed on to me as a type of type of teaching. But there are tribes and elders and things like that, who will, you know, pass these things on to non Indigenous people and who's to say that they're right or wrong, or what have you. Um, so, exploitation and disrespect are a couple of problematic areas of appropriation. And so there was a great article that I read recently, and I wish I could remember who wrote it, and but it was written by you it was written by a, you know, an African American woman who had some fantastic points. And she was saying, like, there's, you know, there's all these cries of cultural appropriation, and there's a lot of backlash against it, because there are some really silly things like saying that, you know, white people can't make burritos. Because only people from Mexico can make burritos or, you know, stuff like that. Which, you know, I don't know. I mean, that seems pretty silly to me. But, um, she was talking about sort of financial exploitation specifically. And so one example she used and I actually knew this was Elvis Presley's famous song hound dog was actually sung first by an African American woman who is singing, singing about like, kind of a dirty dog, a man and her song, her rendition of a song, in my personal opinion, far superior to Elvis Presley's rendition. And Elvis had to change up the words because obviously, he's not singing about a philandering man, he made it actually about a dog, which seemed really always seemed really weird to me. Even as a child when I heard that song, I was like, why is he singing about a hound dog not catching a rabbit and it made no, it didn't make a lot of sense to me. So go out and look up the original and listen to that. So there's a history of exploit tation of black musicians in the United States and probably in many other places.

The you know, the, the, I can think of many instances but this is one word Elvis you know made millions and millions of dollars in the original artists made a pittance prep maybe diatom poverty, I don't know. But I do know this. So you know that if you're familiar with the song, the the jungle in the jungle, the might the lion sleeps tonight that actually comes from an African chant. And the original recording is available, you can, you can find it, it's scratchy, it's from like, I don't know, the 20 years of the 30s it's very old. The musician who the you know, the African musician who laid down that track sold the rights to it for something like adult of the equivalent of $1.50 today and he wound up he did wind up dying in poverty and eventually his estate, but it took decades was awarded you know, they basically said he was cheated out of you know, millions of dollars in residuals for the song over so many years. But look it up go look, go look at the original. So, this is this is exploitation. So the other thing, the other thing is disrespect. So when when we make fun of cultures or we use we use cultures as mascots, for example. That can be very hurtful. When we adopt native regalia, for example, as a costume, you know, you're taking something that is sacred to people and turning it into, you know, Halloween costume or something along those lines. And it's not it's really disrespectful in a way that is that is that can be harmful to people can be hurtful, you know, it puts people down. So this is where, you know, this is where the problems of approach appropriation actually come from things that are exploitive, and disrespectful. If we were to go around and say, You cannot ever use a word that doesn't belong to the culture that you were born into. You cannot cook cuisine that does not come from a culture that you belong to. I don't care who you are or where you're living unless you are unless you are actually indigenous and living in a traditional culture that hasn't changed for several 1000s of years, you're probably going to have to eliminate a lot of stuff from your life. Culture borrows culture appropriates it always has and always will write English in English language is the reason it's so mixed up and a hodgepodge and spelling is so weird is because it borrows from so many other languages, and then look at how many other languages borrow from English, which in turn had borrowed from other places. So it must be fun to be a linguist and try to track the etymology of different words. Sometimes I do sometimes I I'm not a linguist, but I will research where words come from and the etymology of words. So somebody recently said, and this was another one on social media. They said, Oh, you can't use the word magician, unless you are a Zoroastrian priest from Iran or something along those lines because the word Magi isn't you know, came from came from that word. Let's forget the fact that for over 1000 years, the you know, magic and magician have been part of the English language and have come in from different sources and are used in different ways in different cultures. And so jokingly, I said, Well, you know, you can't use the word person, unless you are a Roman theatrical mask, because that's where the word person comes from. And you can't use the word human unless you are dirt from the earth because comes from humus which is dirt from the earth. And persona is that wasn't word for a Roman theatrical mask. How silly would it be if we tried to say you can't use this word unless you are using it in the context it came into the English language

1500 years ago or 1000 years ago? How much of you would not be able to listen to this? I wouldn't be able to do this podcast. I can't, I can't even think of like, you know, in an average sentence, probably 80% of the words aren't. You know, English is originally a Germanic language. If you look back at Old English, there probably aren't a lot of Germanic words in there. Probably most of them are not. There's a lot of romance language in there a lot of French, a lot of Roman because England, where English came from was invasions so many times, right? There were Viking raids, and they set up settlements, and there were Roman raids, and they set up settlements. And then there were the indigenous people that live there. And then there were the, the angles and the Saxons and all you know, etc, etc, etc. So I'm going off on a long tangent to talk about these, these sort of gatekeeper problem, this this gatekeeper issue. And that is, you know, people who set themselves up as the authority to say, You can't do that because of the, the race I perceive you to be or the national origin I perceive you to be or the gender I see you to be. You know, we were recently somebody asked a question online about the Greek goddess AKATA WITCH who is still worshipped I guess, for lack of a better term amongst lots of pagans. You know, she is amongst many things, the goddess of witchcraft and sorcery, so people who identify lots of people who identify as pagan, particularly Hellenistic pagans, she comes from. She comes to us from Greece, but maybe, maybe cultures before that. And then here's another thing, like, who knows where Hakata came from? And there aren't Greek people out there saying, Listen, if you aren't 100% Greek, you can't have an altar to Hakata. So somebody said recently, somebody, a man asked a question online and a woman said Hakata would never reveal her secrets to a man. Really. So you are the gatekeeper of Makati. Um you know, I almost have no words for that, um, there are, you know, there are lots of people of all genders and gender, you know, sex sexes, genders, gender identities, sexualities who do work with all sorts of gods. And I can tell you that some of the leading experts on the, you know, the worship of Makati today are men, some are women, but there are some who are men. And they seem to be very effective at what they do. I don't think honestly, when it comes to spirit, we're all the same underneath there, they're there. You know, there's no difference. When we're talking about spirit, we're talking about the Undying, divine spark within all of us. There's no difference between a female spirit or a male spirit or a Native American spirit or spirit from from somebody from Africa. We are all the same underneath we are all connected. And so this is where I think the solution or my you know, my proposals come in. First of all, let's stop separating people into little boxes. Yes, let us respect culture. Let us not be exploitive of people who have been exploited for so long. Let us support indigenous cultures. Let us support tribal rights all over the world. You know tribal rights to land into resources. We want to raise everybody up. We don't want to keep people separated. We have been doing that for 1000s of years and how has it worked for us?

Let me tell you it's sucks We have wars, we have racism, we have sexism, we have violence. This is all a product of this separation. And when I see it from people who may have great intentions, you might have the best of intentions, oh, I am going to speak up for this. For these people who have been persecuted, you have the best intentions in the world. But the more you keep, keep people separated. The more separated we are. I mean, that's just it's just we just keep the status quo. We keep the patriarchy in place.

When we encounter people who are spiritual seekers, whatever path they decide to tread upon, go down, explore or follow, as long as they live. As long as they're not harming anyone else. Let them support them, encourage them. Life is hard. Life is hard, and how dare we take things away from people that are helping them get through life. And I'm in to speak very honestly, and, and be a little bit vulnerable here. And say to you that if it were not for shamanism, if it were not for my study of shamanism, I probably would not still be alive today, I was on my way out. When I took up the practice of shamanism to heal myself. I had lost 60 pounds. I could not eat, I could not sleep. Um, my adrenals were completely burned out. They tested my tested my adrenals and said you're you're once one tiny level away from having permanent damage that cannot be repaired. Um though people at the time might not have known it because I was fairly good at hiding it other than you can't hide a loss of 60 pounds. I was very ill, very ill. And people want to say no, you should have just died because your parents were not born. You know, you were not born inside an indigenous culture. Um, I'm sorry. No, no, that's not that's not gonna fly. That doesn't fly. Mmm hmm. And the other thing is we don't say things like, well, you, you know you are not a Middle Eastern, or Greek person. So you can't be Christian. Or you. You know, I think but all of these you know. You know, we don't we don't tell. You know, there are lots of Native American people who go to Christian churches. We don't tell them they can't do that. You can't do that. Why? Because that would be that wouldn't be right. Now there are there are there are some racist churches out there. I realized that I don't think we only have to look to some of these. I'll call them focus folk ish churches that are these churches are for white people only to see how problematic this separation can become when it is taken to its extreme. Right, so, um, instead of calling people crazy. Instead, here's where you know, I promise I'm getting to the solution part I've talked a little bit about instead of calling people crazy and putting them down, put him in little boxes. Let us work to bring people together to uplift them. Before you open your mouth. Think about the effect of what or type in social media think about the effect that it's going to have for people. And think about getting some more information. If you think you have the answer to something if you're making really generous Eric, generalized statements about things. It's time to learn some stuff. If you're saying things like, Westerners are crazy. That's a really generic statement. If you're saying things like, you know, you can't do this because it doesn't belong to you. It's kind of a generic statement, do some research and find out. And yeah, I mean, if there's actual injustice out there, and that deserves to have attention pointed to it, if there's exploitation if there's disrespect, I've called people out I saw recently there were

some people doing a hodgepodge ceremony, as I would call it, and I don't have a problem with anybody's particular ceremony. People can create ceremony, create ritual, you know, I certainly do. I have one. I have ritual coming up that I that I've created a public ritual. But they were doing a quote unquote, shamanic initiation, they were doing it on a young boy. And they had they were, they were in Europe somewhere. And they were to European gentleman in blue jeans and Apache war bonnets. And then we're surrounded by Celtic symbols. And, you know, I was sort of like, well, you know, we probably should be avoiding the Apache war bonnets if we are not actually Apache. And, you know, that is, I understand that, that you may be wanting to, I don't know, I don't know what the point of them wearing those war bonnets were. But it was it was inappropriate, it was inappropriate, it came across as you know, whether they intended respect or not, it was basically they were trying to present the image that they were doing something that have legitimacy, because it was attached to some particular Native American tribe, and that's exploitive, and I don't, and that was also not a good thing. And that's why I make it very, very clear to people who mistakenly think that I'm doing some kind of Native American ceremony because I use a hoop drum. And that's it. I don't dress in buckskin or use wear Native American regalia or use, you know, use chance or any of those things that I don't know them first of all, but you know, I don't I'm not presenting that I'm representing a culture, which would be really negative appropriation. So anyway, I realized there's been a little bit of a negative podcast for him to start the new year perhaps we'll get more positive from here on out. But look to be a solution and not a problem look to support people in their spiritual quests, if people are strain. And, you know, when I saw these people with a patchy headdresses, I didn't call them names or whatever, but I called it out and I said, you know, you, you know, this is a hodgepodge thing, you know, that this is probably this might be offensive to some people, you should really rethink wearing these, you know, I think you're presenting the wrong image here. And there's no reason why you can't be doing an initiation without these things. Without without barring these, you know, the regalia from another culture you know, so anyway, I will I will wrap this up for this episode. I hope that you have a happy and healthy New Year, do your parts to keep the world healthy, to help get us past this pandemic and restore some normalcy to everyone's life. I love you all. I wish you a great New Year.

Announcer 59:48

You have been listening to speaking spirit with your host, John more. For more info or to contact John go to main shaman.com That's ma i n e s ha am a n.com

Ep40 Divination and Free Will

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 0:45

Hello, everybody.

It's been a little while since I've done one of these actually, it's been just just about a week. But we just crossed the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States. And for me, that was a very busy time where I ate my body weight and pie, and delicious things. And time has a way of being very flexible, which, you know, very relative to our mere mortal minds, which will lead me into the topic for today. Pretty well, actually. Uh, I hope you're doing well. We are in the midst of the holiday season as I record this, we Diwali was a little while ago, Hanukkah, we're I think third night of Hanukkah, maybe. I'm sorry, to my Jewish friends. I, I know we're in the middle of Africa at some point. And we're in. We're now in December. And it is. It's cold here in the state of Maine where I live in the United States. I was just a guest on a podcast last night with a group of people from Pennsylvania. And they were like, Oh, how cold does it get up there? My God, you know, negative 30 Fahrenheit? And they're like, oh, yeah, that's nothing. We you know, I live in upstate New York or I live in Pittsburgh, or what have you. That's nothing. But it's cold to me. I realize it's colder, many, many places on Earth than it is here. But so relatively speaking, and relative things are going to be really important to today's conversation. We're going to get into divination, which happens to be one of my favorite topics. And I'm going to talk a little bit personally about divination. My theories about how divination works and can you predict the future? Could you pick winning lottery numbers? Why not? If you can't, doesn't that mean? Divination is a load of crap or something else. And, you know, on a personal level, when I started training in shamanism many moons ago, shamanism is my chosen path. And by chosen, I mean, it chose me, not the other way around very much. So. My own story is that I was dealing with a personal crisis and doing some meditation. And there was a very loud voice, booming male voice that came not from inside my head, but it sounded like it was outside my head saying you need to learn shamanism. Not you need to go see a shaman or what have you. And living in Maine, I was like, Well, how's that going to happen? I don't even Siberia or Peru or Mongolia. And turns out there are some fantastic shamanic teachers up here. My teacher who is Gosh, retiring from teaching at the end of this month. You know, and I am I count she was a guest on this podcast earlier. In the year, I count my blessings. I I am so grateful that she I was able to study with her while she was still actively teaching. Now she's still you know, she's still going she's, you know, she has become an elder. But she's not actively teaching classes or or students anymore and as passing the torch on to myself and some others, which is I'm also grateful for. I'm one of eight people who she trained as a teacher. So that's kind of that makes me feel really good about myself. But when I started shamanism, and like okay, we're gonna do divination. I was like, I don't want to do divination. And if I have to look back on why that was so problematic for me, there are, there are a few reasons. One, I'm relatively scientifically minded. And, you know, I thought, not all but I thought most divination was kind of a load. Like I thought people were making stuff up, you know, I have seen I have seen psychic Grifters who do things like cold reading, you know, you know, I can tell by the way you're standing, that you're a person who cares about other people, you know, they make these really bold, generic statements that are true to everyone.

So I had a little bit of prejudice going in. The other thing that sort of held me back from divination, work was the was fear. And the fear that, gosh, if I do this, if I do this divination work, and I'm wrong, right? If I, if I come up with some information for this person that I'm doing divination for. And it's wrong, then, you know, a, I could be, you know, they could be following what I tell them and run into trouble. Or, you know, be it just might mean that I'm making everything up in my head. And there's a time in all practitioners lives where, you know, probably more than once we're like, okay, am I actually making all of this up? Am I inventing all these things that I'm experiencing? Well, the longest short of it is kind of Yes, you are making a lot of it up. In fact, as you listen to my, the sounds of my voice, you're not listening to the sounds of my voice. You have, there are airwaves that are hitting your eardrums that are coming out of some machine, whether it's your car stereo, or your laptop, or iPhone, or you know, whatever device you're listening to this on, you know, electrical signals are turning into waves in the air that strike your eardrums, and your consciousness is inventing the experience of hearing me speak. So we are, when I say that we are co creating the universe, which is a part of my part of my professional bio, I believe that we are all co creating the universe. That is absolutely 100% true all of the time. You are creating the all of the experiences that you're having. Yes, there is external stimulus coming in. So, you know, but then there is the I'm inventing this out of whole cloth, feeling with divination, right? Am I just completely making something up to have an answer to something, you know, my pulling answers out of, you know, my, I'm inventing something, you're gonna fall down a well, tomorrow and break your hip? You know, there is, you know, there is a question that always comes up, but not always, but frequently comes up with people as they're practicing as they're learning that about whether they're creating fictional information, I guess I should say, that's probably a better way to phrase it is this fiction. And so, let me I'm going to dive into a delve into that. And I'm gonna talk about how I believe divination actually works. And if you don't know what divination is, you don't know what the word divination is, I'm going to define, I'm going to define my terms as I always do. And again, not because I think my definitions of things are better than yours, or should replace yours. But just so you know, what I mean, when I'm talking about things. So divination is using, you know, using methods of determining things like the future prophecy, you know,

observation without physical, beyond physical means, right? So, anything that does sort of predicts the future or, and there's, you know, there's Oh, so many different kinds of one of my favorites, Wikipedia pages, is, I'm looking up on my phone real quick here, so I can give it to you. It is, pardon me. It is meth called methods of divination. And it is a huge, huge, huge list. I just Love going through it, I just think it's interesting. And there's all these things that end in the word Mansi, which I think is the Greek, meaning, the Greek root for sort of prediction, right? So there are, you know, there's something called Test Diomansy, for example, which is using coffee, to predict, predict things using coffee to prophesize. Right? I mean, that's interesting. And there are, you know, almost anything you can think of can be used. So, some popular means of divination, we might look at scrying, which is looking at a crystal ball or a, you know, a bowl of water or a, you know, dark mirror or something along those lines. To see at a distance, that's called scrying. There's probably a Mansi word for that. There's cartomancy, which is telling the future or you know, prophecy, it's not always telling the future, but, um, is doing divination with cards. So those are really popular tarot cards. Some people use regular playing cards. I'm a fan of card set of cards called Lenormand cards, which are not as old as tarot, but much simpler and in my opinion, easier to grasp. Taro is an amazing, amazing spiritual tool, particularly the rider, Waite Smith, tarot deck. And I don't just say, Rider Waite, because the images were painted by a woman was last name with Smith. And we don't give women enough credit for the things that they do, including helping to find the structure of DNA. We know Crick and Watson. But I can't even remember the name of the woman who was integral in that discovery. So let's give women some credit for the things for the things that they do. I apologize if I went silent for a second I was messing with the cords in the back of my soundboard and something came loose four seconds. And I don't generally edit these things I like it's not just that I'm lazy and don't like editing. I have done some editing in the past. But I think it's more pure, you get more of a sense of who I am. If I'm not editing out my little coughs, silent moments, my arms and ORs that sort of thing. I'm working on my I'm sinners working on that. I'm told that that's a bad thing in public speaking. So I see there's an I'm, I'm practicing, practicing trying to reduce my arms and ORs. So there's, there's one again, now I'm conscious of it. Now you are too probably. But let's forget that let's talk about so I was talking about Lenormand cards, which are simpler than tarot cards. Tarot is a powerful tool. It is more than just a tool of prediction. There's a whole allegory going on, particularly in the Major Arcana, the rider, Waite Smith, tarot deck, let's give women the credit that they deserve for the things that they do. And the inventions that they come up with and the art that they create. We are well, we should be well past the age where we cannot give women credit for things, and that men are taking more credit than they should. So let's talk let's dive into divination. And so you know, there are pendulums and crystal balls and cards and in I'm sorry if this is gross. But in ancient Rome and Greece, they would read the end trails of slaughtered animals. And they would there were there's, you know,

doing predictions based on the movement of birds. And there's divination from dreams, which is called Oh, near romancey. I just that's just one that I know. But if you look at the methods of divination page on Wikipedia, I don't know I'm fascinated by it. I don't know how all of these things work. I don't know how divination by dust works. Do you throw dust? Right? A famous method from China is the eaching. Right where they would cast lots, I think there were bones or sticks. And the way they would land would create, you know, they would create these hexagrams these, you know, these six lined figures, and then they would look up the meaning in a book. And you can do that also with coins. There's a way to do that with coins. And I just think it has to be kind of a heads or tails kind of thing. I'm not sure I've I've had eaching readings done before and was so many years ago, maybe like 30 years ago. that I don't exactly remember how that worked. But yeah, somebody I remember casting something, I think it was coins. And you know, the person use that to create these hexagrams. And then each hexagram is broken out into a trigram. And they're then read together, and some of them are immutable. So they transform, you know, from one thing to another, and there's, you know, there's some, there's some science behind it. So there's a little bit of science behind a lot of forms of divination, for example, when I say science, I mean, sort of written ways of reading certain things. So if you, you know, you can get a book on tarot, and you can draw the, the moon card, and look up what the moon means in Tarot. How, whenever, like, all things, these standard written definitions start to break down, because they have to be necessarily they have to be sort of generic. Right. And this is where the, my, my thing with divination, my hang up with divination, the very beginning sort of took place. So if I draw, you know, two people are sitting in front of me, and I draw the moon card for each one of them out of a tarot deck. Does that mean the same thing for each person? You know, can I just read out of a book what that card means? And for me the answer that is no, you can't just do that. And the books and the learning have certain meanings, certain attributes of a card, or a symbol, or that sort of thing. Those kinds of things. You know, looking them up, is sort of operating with training wheels, like knowing the dictionary meaning of the word food, is one thing. But being a chef, is an entirely different thing. Right. And so knowing that, knowing the book, meaning of the moon card, out of the Tarot deck is one thing, but being able to read that into somebody's question into somebody's presence, being able to connect with this symbology there and relate it to somebody that requires some skill, some practice, some effort, some ability. And so my take on divination is it is not the tool. But the person using the tool that makes the reading accurate or not, or useful or not. Accuracy is one thing, usefulness is another thing. I could draw a card and say Your eyes are blue, and that would be 100% accurate if your eyes were blue, and useful, not at all. Right? So accuracy and usefulness are not necessarily the same thing. So I think what has to happen is you learn a tool, so I know people who are fantastic with Tarot cards, or fantastic with astrology, or fantastic with scrying, or what have you, well, scrying scribing is a whole other thing, because you have like, you can't, you can't do scrying without ability, because you're just then you're just staring at a crystal or something.

So, but we'll take you know, we'll take things like cards or eaching or, you know, something dust where there are specific symbols, that means specific things, certain numbers of birds appearing. And they, you know, they have maybe what we might call dictionary meanings or book meanings.

So somebody who's really good at divination goes beyond those things. And those are kind of a starting point for doing in tuit of reading and yes, there are there are people who are psychic or clairvoyant or what have you, who use no tools whatsoever, and just to, you know, pure readings on people. And that you know, and that's a thing. I like, I'm going to I like different tools. I like playing with different tools. I like cards and pendulums and scrying mirrors and I have a divination bundle that I that I use for readings. And so, you know what has to happen is that a person has to develop the right state of mind, in my take, you know, to be really accurate, and there's been some experiments with this, people with EGS, you have to read it reach a certain state of mind and the information kind of flows through you. And these tools are sort of two things happen. One is they are a leaping off point for the reading that you're doing, like if I do a card spread. And I would do, you know, let's say I would draw some Lenormand cards, and the same spread would come for two different people, those readings would be completely different, even though the cards would be the same, there would be some thematic elements, that would be the same. But you know, I, you know, get to the point where I let my, I let my in to ative abilities, pass through the reading. That's the best way I can sort of describe it. So there is a thing to be said for skill, not just going out and buying a pack of tarot cards, and all of a sudden, you're a fantastic reader, you might be you might be particularly sensitive. But you have to learn them, and you have to spend time with them. So let me tell you a little personal story. And this is not to be indulgent. And that's not to brag. It's not, I am not better than anybody else at divination. But I thought I was worse than everybody else at divination, or I thought, This is not something I want to do. And so I was in training. And I was assigned to work with another student who in do some divination work. And I, it took a little bit of the pressure off, right, because this is just another student, if things are not if things don't go well, you know, there's not, you know, it's it's training, training. So the pressure is off a little bit. But I, you know, I did feel some pressure. So, you know, this person asked me some questions, to do some divination for. And so what I did was divination journey, meaning I did a shamanic journey to determine some information for her. And, you know, I've had many experiences like this sense, but this was sort of the first thing that happened to me that was like, Oh, I could not possibly have made up this information. So she asked me about, she was considering a couple of different places to move. And, you know, I think one of them was Bangladesh. And the other one was like, California, or, you know, whatever. And so in my journey, I saw, you know, snowy owls and snow foxes and snow, and I saw, you know, direct line to the northeast from where we were, and I was like, you know, I don't know about that. She's like, Yeah, that, whatever. And I was, and I sort of dismissed it. And then I didn't, you know, and she sort of dismissed it. Yeah. You know, that doesn't sound like it anywhere that I'm intending on going or even thinking about. And the other thing that I saw was a, you know, there were, like, I had this vision in front of her where were some glasses of beer. And she was pushing them away, and grabbing, like a smoothie or something, something healthier off the table. And I related that to her. She's like, Huh, I wonder what that's about? So, you know, who knows, who knows, I just sort of let it go. I'm like, okay, it was my first practice. And,

you know, I don't know if I can do this. So a few months later, she emails me and she had moved to Sweden. On top of that, she had decided that she was drinking way too much, and she had given up drinking. Now, one might wonder if my reading at that time influenced her decision or what have you. But at the time, it wasn't, you know, that move was not an option. That was not something that was on the table. So, you know, this I counted, you know, I sort of said, Wow, I you know, that's really what I felt and saw in this sort of relates. And so maybe there's something to this. So a little while later, because she felt that that had been really successful for her. The place where she was living was unsuitable. It had rodents or some other problems with it, and she had to move out and she asked me to do another journey for her and determined trying to help her find, you know, some work and a job and that sort of thing. So I like okay, well, you know, I'll do what I can. And I tried. And so I got this really strong vision of a red farmhouse, red farmhouse. And then I also saw this city scape. And I to the point where I drew a map of it. And it was like, there's an official building here, and there's a river here, and there's cobblestones, and there's a fountain here. And then there's modern building over here, and another street over here. And I could actually draw a map of the, the city. And so then I contacted this person, and I said, I'm, you know, I'm seeing a red farmhouse. And then, but I'm also seeing this city area, where there's an official building, and to the east of that is a river or a seaport or something, water, and there's a fountain and there's cobblestones, and this is the way the building looks and XYZ. And she's like, well, you know, I don't know, I mean, I live in the city, the farmhouse thing, maybe that's a metaphor is again, you know, maybe I don't know. And, you know, what, the city, you know, that sounds like some areas I've been in. And she told me, the city that she was living in. And I went back, and I use Google Maps. And this was a place. This is a country, I've never been to a city, I've never been to a city I didn't know anything about.

And I looked, and I had depicted the official like the city hall building, and everything around it, and had drawn it out on a map, I could, you know, overlay it on top of Google Maps, I was kind of blown away by that, but still didn't know what the red farmhouse meant. And so, you know, again, another couple months go by, and I get an email from this person. And she said, I wanted to send you this picture. This is the view out of the window of the house that I'm now renting. And looking out the you know, the kitchen, or I don't know which window it was the window, the main large window, and her house was a red farmhouse, she an opportunity to move to the country to rent a rent a house that was part of a farmstead and her landlord lived in the red farmhouse. And it was exactly what had happened in my vision. And I was a little bit blown away. I've all you know, not, again, not by my own abilities, but by the things the spirits were showing me for this person. I have since had many, many, many other experiences that I could not have possibly made up. So I was working with Rhys very recently working with a client. And I don't think that I'm particularly psychic, or clairvoyant or what have you, but when I'm in Journey, spirits sometimes show me things that are factually empirically accurate, and can be proven almost immediately. So I was working with a client not that long ago, over zoom, she lives in another part of the country. And, you know, I'm journeying for her. And during my journey, I keep seeing this little black and white kitten. And it's like, rubbing up against her and standing next to her and, you know, just really seems to want to be around her. So, you know, I'm talking to her resume, and I come back and I, and I say I, you know, I don't know if this means anything to you. But during my journey, I just keep seeing this. This black and white kitten. And she said, I just bought a black and white kitten. And it has been trying to get in this room with me, since I have been on the Zoom call with you. And I said, we'll let her in because she wants she really wants to be next to you. And she left the kitten in and brought it up on the, on the I think she was sitting on a bed or a couch or something. And she led her up on it. And the kitten was just pleased as punch being next to her rubbing up against her just as I'd seen in my journey. So there have been some very, very immediately verifiable moments in journeying for me when I've been able to determine determine certain factual things and sometimes things take time. I've sort of predicted maybe some health conditions that people might experience to, you know, clients to help them warm things. And again, I'm not saying any of this to brag or say that I'm special. I think anybody can develop this ability Um, but again, it has to be an ability that's developed, that's worked on. So when you pick up a deck of tarot cards, or you, you know, roll dice or you use a pendulum, really the what's going on as you are the interface between the spirit world and these tools, but also between these tools in the spirit world. And if you're doing the reading for a person or yourself, you have to surface these, these things into consciousness.

So I want to spend a little bit of time about predicting the future. And I just, you know, I just talked about a couple of, or at least an incident. Well, there were a couple, a couple that I discussed. One was the red farmhouse incident that one's always stands out for me because it was the first time I had done divination, shamanic Lee and, you know, read farmhouses, pretty visual. It was, you know, bright as day sort of visual kind of thing. And, you know, getting the email from from this person later on was pretty cool. I love to get confirmation. I had a client very recently, who I predicted some health, some health issue for him, like, you got to watch out for this. And she contacted me and like, Oh, yes, that arose. That was a problem. I'm a bit blown away that you were able to see that set me up. I mean, I get it, I understand. But sometimes the spirits show me things. And as a shamanic practitioner, I don't take credit for any of this stuff. This is all stuff coming from the spirits. They're showing me things. I don't, I don't particularly have the ability to. I'm not particularly clairvoyant, or psychic, or I guess I'm probably more sensitive to most people. Because I work in this field, I work in a field that involves spiritual healing and divination and that sort of thing. So I've developed some sensitivity, but I don't think I was born with it or anything like that. Um, so let me dive into predicting the future and how I think that works. And what are the implications for being able to predict the future? Like if I could predict the future with 100% accuracy? What does that mean for freewill? Like if I, you know, if I was 100% accurate in my future predictions, and I say tomorrow, I'm going to have a peanut butter sandwich for lunch. Does that mean I can no longer choose to not have a peanut butter sandwich for lunch tomorrow. And my feeling about that is no, we we have freewill. Things are not predestined in that way. And I have not yet heard of anyone being able to predict lottery numbers. So we have this lottery here in many states in the US called Powerball. And your chances of winning that are something like one and 300 million, you are much more likely to get hit by lightning multiple times in your life than you are to win that lottery. There are many things you are more likely to die in a car accident driving to the store to buy a lottery ticket than you are to win the lottery. So, there are many many you know the probabilities are our you know immense, and so, when somebody is predicting the future, the physical reality future, so, on a spiritual level, there are subtle levels where time starts to break down because we know that time is very much linked to mass matter. Right? And so on the physical and the etheric and even the someone on the astral levels time still affects things because these things in the physical level for sure because there's mass there, but the etheric is sort of like the next spiritual level and you know, the etheric is is affected by time and the astral a little less so, it's even more subtle, and the mental level not so much affected by time. So there you know, there's these different levels to reality to human reality, or non human reality as well. And so, what I think happens with the future a little right now I exist on the physical, the etheric, the astral, and is that there are a set of probabilities That can happen. Right? There are things that are more probable and less probable, given the given the set of, you know, almost infinite circumstances that are going on right now. So, for example, it is very probable that the sun will rise in the east tomorrow, because the earth hasn't changed the way that it spins. Could the earth change the way that it spins?

You know, I'm guessing that maybe there are some circumstances under which that could happen. Maybe it gets hit by a giant asteroid that changes the direction of its spin or something I don't know. I don't know. But it is incredibly improbable. And so we can all predict that the sun will rise in the east tomorrow. And we would all be sort of spot on probably spot on accurate because that is, there are some significant probabilities there, the probabilities against that. So I think future prediction is about reading probabilities. And that in some systems of divination, I know Taro, particularly Lenormand, says, you know, their particular spreads that say, this is the result of you go down the path that you're currently going down. Right, and so that it's looking at the probabilities based on what's going on right now. Now, you can make different choices, you can change those probabilities. My friend, when I told her, you're going to move to a place of the red farmhouse could have nots, she could have, you know, that opportunity presented itself said, Well, I'm not gonna, I'm gonna make that not happen. And I'm chosen a different place to live. So could have definitely, or, you know, could have, could have definitely done something to foil that, you know, that sort of thing. So, and again, this also works with things that we're trying to manifest. I think manifestation divination are closely related. I'll talk about that sometime in the future on a different podcast. But I think, you know, so let's say that I predict, say, somebody asks me about losing weight, something people are concerned with, they want to manifest, they have blocks to that, and I say, oh, you know, you're working out, you're dieting, all these things are going on, and I do a reading and it says, you know, if you go down this path, you know, you are going to lose the weight you want to lose in the next three months. And the person takes that information says, Wow, I'm going to lose that weight in the next three months, no matter what I do. And I'm going to go out and eat six cheeseburgers and drink nine milk shakes every day. Well, that predictions not gonna come true. Because the person has taken the information and changed the probable course of things. So let's talk about the lottery. I like to use that one, because it's an extreme example, right? If if, you know, divination were 100% accurate, if we could predict all probabilities based on a huge amount of chaos, you know, I could tell you exactly what the lottery numbers are going to be tomorrow, or whenever they draw the lottery and keep up on it. So lottery there, they, the way they draw it here, I believe, is that they have these machines that are full of, or a machine that's full of these ping pong balls with numbers on them. And the machine gets mixed up in at a random time that you know, somebody, you know, sort of random, somebody like pushes a button and then six numbers are drawn or something or however many it is, right. And so the odds of picking those exact numbers are something like one in 300 million. So trying to predict that you're trying to predict a one in 300 million thing. There's a lot of probabilistic stuff happening, right? So first of all, those balls are physical objects, and they're very light. And they're affected by things like air currents, movements, vibrations in the room, and they're inside this giant machine that's stirring that's going to stir them up later. And the machine is probably stored away. I think, you know, I don't know, but it's probably locked up. So people can't tamper with it. Well, you know, in between drawings and then wheeled out and That moves those balls around when it's wheeled out. So there is a lot of chaos in the system, meaning there's a lot of things that aren't fitting certain patterns may be very challenging, or nearly impossible to predict something like that or to affect something like that. See, I think manifestation is about affecting probabilities.

You know, and I think divination of the future is about determining is about tapping into those probable futures. Now we have, you know, a relative relatively infinite, isn't that a weird word, phrase, relatively infinite. That just means to me, it's so close to infinite that I can't, I can't measure or count, right, an infinite number of probabilities. And every time we make a freewill choice, we split off from the probabilities. So you know, from from a choice that we didn't make or a different choice that we could have made, we split off from that set of probabilities and affect the future. And we can do things very easily, physically, very easily to manifest stuff. When I say manifest, I mean, like, you know, let's say I want to manifest a clay pot, I can go buy some clay and a throwing wheel and learn how to,

you know, learn how to make a clay pot on a on a wheel. And I can manifest that way physically. That's very easy. And that's really affecting a bunch of probabilities when they go out and buy clay and learn how to, you know, throw clay on a wheel and how to spin and, or whatever the, whatever the phrases are for making clay pots. Okay, that's different than sitting at my table and wishing real hard and expecting a clay pot to show up on my table to manifest. Could that happen? Absolutely. And then infinite in the expanding universe, anything is possible. And we know that through quantum tunneling, things can disappear and appear in random locations, does something that macro happen,

like, do clay pots, or, you know, cars or whatever, disappear and reappear in other places frequently? Not that much, not so much. Okay, so it's easier, it's easier to affect the probabilities of something physical happening physically. So the reason it's so hard to predict the lottery is that there's so much chaos in the system, every little movement, every little air currents, every, you know, you figure the electricity running through machine is running at 60 cycles per second, but it's probably not all that clean, there's probably a lot of fluctuation in that and every little thing affects the system. And we can't account for all of that we can't necessarily or you know, if you could, it would be something pretty impressive to determine all in the correct sort of future path that we're going down. And this has implications for, you know, I've done some things with parallel lives when we, you know, make choices, and we split off. And this is what I said, we have sort of infinite parallel lives, different sets of probabilities playing out in different parallel universes. You know, and that sounds very sci fi or very fantasy or whatever. But I have had some experience with doing this work. And it does seem to be a thing. And it fits well into my model of how divination works. Right? So, um, you know, somebody comes to me, I don't do I don't do love. I don't really do love work. Like, I don't make people fall in love with other people. I think love magic like that is probably fairly it's not a good thing, like anything we're doing where we're trying to take away somebody's free will is not fantastic. And I also wouldn't do divination work or somebody who's like, what is my what is my soulmate look like or you know, what have you. But if somebody were interested in finding a partner, and I've done work with people who this has been a priority for them, you know, it's, you know, I want to find a partner. And I really just want you know, what I want to happen is I walk in my house and the phone rings And my soulmate is on the other end of the line waiting to meet me. And I'm very realistic with people and say, that's not going to happen. That doesn't happen, okay? Or I can predict with some degree of

certainty that those kinds of things are very rare, if not zero occurrences. So, you know, if you want to meet somebody, and eventually find your soulmate, I might do divination for you for you and say, what would be in your best interest in meeting somebody who would be suitable for you, and I might get information along the lines of, well, you know, you really should take care of your take care of your parents, because people, you know, maybe unfortunate, but people do. First impressions are based on appearance. And, you know, you need to learn to talk to people, because if you are so shy, that you can never have a conversation with somebody, nobody is going to come up and force themselves upon you. They're like, I'm your soulmate. You we are now dating. And I think that's a little bit of what people kind of expect with spiritual manifestation and divination and that sort of thing. So, you know, when I work with people on that stuff, I'm not going to tell them who their soulmate is, I'm not going to tell them how to force somebody they're obsessed with to fall in love with them,

any of those things. But what I might do say, okay, you know, if you want to increase your chances of meeting a partner, there'll be suitable for you, here are some things that you can do that will, you know, turn you towards those probabilities that will help help those things, help those probabilities, increase them, help things come into fruition

I think it's gonna be very ineffective. And so I like to use a car analogy. We talked about firing on all cylinders, right? So cars work with cylinders. At least most do electric cars don't have cylinders, but gasoline engines have cylinders. And they, they, you know, they're in these chambers. They're these chambers where the gas essentially has little controlled explosions that make the pistons move.

And that turn the machinery in the engine that makes your cargo. So if you have six cylinders in your car, you are firing on all cylinders. You're working at maximum capacity. If you have six cylinders in your car and so if you have body mind, spirit, soul body, spirit body astral body, divine body, bliss body We all have these, you know, all of these components to you. And you are, you know, half of them are doing one thing and half of them are doing another thing, you're not firing all cylinders, you're not going to be very effective.

So if I want to lose some excess body fat, and I realize I'm using this, I'm just using this because it's an easy example. This is No, I don't want to go down the whole pathway of our unhealthy obsession with things like weight and dieting, and that sort of thing. But let's say for health reasons, it's an easy example, because it's physical. And I can explain how we override that or override ourselves with wrong action. So let's say I want to, for health reasons, lose in excess 10 pounds of body weight. What am I going to do? Well, on physical level, I'm going to start going to the gym, or workout or run or, you know, what have you and start to eat, right. But I also have to get my mind and emotions behind that. Because it's going to be so hard to eat right? People are emotional eaters, it's me so hard to continue to eat, right? It's going to be so hard to get to the gym, if I don't have my mind and emotions in alignment. And here is a real secret, my friends, a real spiritual secrets to manifesting the life that you want. The things that you want in your life, get into alignment. And that means your mind, body and spirit are acting as one. You are firing on all cylinders, you're all moving in the same direction. And there you know there are that's sounds very easy. It is not always very easy to do that. It's hard to change our minds. It's hard to change habits. It's hard to know how to do things spiritually, that affects the physical world. You know, but knowing that knowing that you need to be in alignment, you can take steps to learn how to do that, to do that to do practices, what have you. There are a lot of different ways to go about that. I'm not saying that. I don't recommend shamanism as a path to everyone. Not on here proselytizing. We don't do that. But there are ways to do that. There are lots of ways to do that shamanic Lee is just one of those. There are meditative ways there are strictly psychological ways. Although you know, at some point that psychology will, will move over into spirituality as well. Our mind, body and spirit are connected. They're all one big continuum. These are not separate things. I realize I've gotten a little far off the beaten path of divination. But it's important for me to talk about freewill because we have freewill. And I do things to support people's free will and autonomy and spiritual sovereignty. And, you know, let me be clear that I don't think sovereignty necessarily means I do whatever I want. And there are no repercussions for that. No, I'm sorry, that's not sovereignty, that is being a sociopath. You know, we're going through pandemic right now. And there are a good portion of the world who are resisting some of the very easy things that we could be doing to prevent people from getting sick and dying. And they refuse to in the name of their freedoms. And it's a little bit you know, not to get too political. And for me, it's not even a political issue. It's a matter of being selfish. Yes, you have freewill. You have freewill. You know, but that doesn't mean you're free from the repercussions of your actions. You're free to make whatever choices you're what you want. You have freewill, you can go out and murder somebody tomorrow. That is your free will. And you have that. But that doesn't mean you get away with it. But it doesn't mean you don't go to jail. That doesn't mean we don't take you out of society. Because your freewill is interfering with my freewill, my free will to live. It is my right and my freewill to live. It It sounds almost contradictory but it's not that hard concept to grasp. You're absolutely free to make whatever choice as you want,

but you're not free from the repercussions of those choices. If I decide that I can fly by jumping off a 14 story building, that is my choice, but gravity is going to intervene, and I'm going to fall to my death. And that in no way takes away my freewill. I have made my choice. I've decided I can fly. I chose that. But physics says otherwise there are repercussions for actions and that has that has repercussions are the natural consequences of the exercise of freewill? So today, I, you know, I hear so many people talking about freedom, as in free will, meaning I do whatever I want. And there are no repercussions. And what kind of a world would we live in? If that were the case? Right. My Freedom says I can drive drunk on the road. And if I get into a car accident and kill a family, then nothing can happen to me because that was my freedom. It's my freedom to do that. No, no, it is not. I'm sorry. It is my freedom to pollute the environment and cause health problems for everyone because that's my freewill. Sure, it's your freewill to choose to do that. But there are going to be repercussions for that. So let's, you know, let's start being mature about freedom. Let's start being let's start talking, you know, talking about that. So it's important for me to discuss freewill, I realized I went off on a little bit of a political rant, because they're talking about predicting the future. And I don't believe that doing future predictions takes away our freewill at all. Because we can do things to alter. So these are probable futures. When we do predictions, there's a certain amount of probability it's more probable than not given certain given current circumstances, and those current circumstances can change. Right? I can predict, I'm going to get a raise at work next week. You know, and show up to work naked, and I'm probably going to get fired. But my prediction said I was going to get a race. Sure. But I stymied that. I stymied that prediction by exercising my free will. And then there were repercussions because I got fired. I'm in, in shamanism a really good like one of the things we'll ask in divination is what is likely to happen if I do like if I'm trying to decide between different choices. So if you are trying to pick between I've got two job offers, and which one should I pick? I don't do should I predictions? What I do is what, you know, the divination journey that I would do, the question would be, what might it be like? If I chose Job A? And what might it be like, if I chose job B, and then I can report those things back to the client I'm doing work for. So then I can say, well, you know, in scenario one, I see long term growth and this and that, but you seem really bored with your job and job to it seems shorter, lasting, but it's more exciting, and there's more money and, and I am not taking away anyone's free will, given the information that they have, they can make their choices, job one or job to whatever sounds better to them.

That sort of thing. And so, for example, when I saw, you know, I saw a problem, a potential problem with somebody, a client's knee, when I was doing a diagnostic journey for them, I'm like, I don't know if you have knee problems yet. But, you know, just be aware and keep an eye on your knees. You know, it looks like there's something there. I don't think it's arthritis or whatever. But you know, if it gets painful or whatever, just seek some medical attention to go okay, you know, whatever. And then she contacted me later and said, You know, I was out for a bike ride and all of a sudden my knees started to really kill me, you know, really be so painful and I decided to stop biking and take a break from that. And I'm like, well That was a good choice. You know, and she could have ignored what I said to keep an eye on the on her knees and kept going and maybe cause some damage. So she had freewill, she had free will to choose what to do with that information. I never tried to take freewill away from anybody. But I will make people aware of their consequences should they exercise certain parts of freewill. So anyway, I've talked about a lot of things. But this has mainly been about divination. I don't know if you do divination or if you have a favorite method of divination. But it's something it can be fun, can be light hearted, it can be something you do at a party, it can be you know, you don't have to if you you're interested in divination, something you can, you know, dip your toes into, you don't have to dive in headfirst and be the world's greatest tarot card reader or scryer, or what have you, right off the bat. And you can try different things you can try eaching or you can try, I don't know, all kinds of stuff out there. Don't don't sacrifice animals, please. But or people don't sacrifice people either. But, you know, give some stuff a try. But keep those things in mind that anything in the future is just probabilities. Things that are more chaotic, meaning they have you know, more probabilities are much harder to follow the line so to speak down the path and figure out what they're going to be and you can intervene with probable futures using your freewill so if you something you know there have there are many stories about people seeing disasters, plane crashes and whatever and deciding not to get on a plane and you know, there's a there's a probability there and they can you can make choices to keep yourself safe and sane and happy and healthy.

So with that, I will leave you for this time. I hope you stay happy and healthy. I hope to hear from you. Please visit my website I have a I also have a brand new YouTube channel which you can get to from my website. My website is maineshaman maineshaman.com.

Announcer 1:02:49

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 maineshahman.com

Ep39 Astral Projection, The Astral Body, And Shamanic Journeying

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

Ep 38 Mindfulness, Manifestation, and Connection to Nature With Heather Webster

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 his John.

John Moore 0:44

Good morning, everybody. Well, I say good morning, I always do that. I would say good morning, even though I have no idea what time of day it is when you're listening to this, but it's morning for me, I always record these in the morning. I've had my coffee, and I'm ready to go. I hope you're all doing well. And I'm very excited today because I have a guest. And it's been a while since I've had a guest. And I was on her podcast recently. And so I'm forcing her to come on my podcast, it's, you know, I'm not above guilting people into coming onto my podcast, but it is. It's my pleasure to introduce you to Heather Webster of Heather Webster wellness.

And Heather does a bunch of interesting stuff. Stuff that I'm completely fascinated with. So I'm gonna let her introduce herself better than I can, I'm sure. And talk a little bit about what you do. Good morning, Heather.

Heather Webster 1:41

Good morning. Wow. Yes, it was definitely not a force. I'm so excited.

I'm excited because I get to have yours air next week. So it's very exciting.

And no, I'm just so excited to be here, to be honest. And when I woke up this morning, I was just like, Oh, I get to, I get to see John and talk to him. Because we have so much in common and things that we're interested in. And the conversation just flows, which is fantastic. And so a little bit about me, I am a educator at heart. I was raised as I wanted to be a teacher from the time I remember stating it in second grade. When I was younger, I had a classroom of imaginary friends gotcha that I would teach. And it was just super fun. And so I was doing that for a really long time and just recently started to do a deeper dive into kind of doing some more healing for myself. And when I was an educator, back in the day, I had decided that I wanted to go back to school for nutrition. And so I did go get my Master's in nutrition and physiology. And while I was there, I was diving into the fact that like a lot of what they teach you in traditional school is very much about what they want you to know. Yes, nutrition and exercise and things like that. And a lot of it's based off of kind of who's in charge

at the higher level, right. And so as I was when I was finishing up my thesis, I actually went to South Korea for a year, and was teaching English to some preschoolers and high in older grades. And as I was there, I was really starting to realize that I still loved teaching. And I did not want to go into like a research field, which is kind of like if you're in nutrition, you're either going the dietician, route, or you're going the route of research, and that was not my thing. And so I started hiking again and getting back out in nature was in South Korea, and finding that love for being outdoors. Again, I've always been an outdoorsy person. And thinking back now, back in the day, right? When I was having a tough time as a child, I would immediately go outside and go catch frogs or snakes or like and connect with them, but or climb a tree. Climbing trees are kind of my memory. It's kind of funny. Earlier this morning, I was outside and I was thinking, Hmm, I guess I was thinking about you and be on your podcast and authors and things like that. Well, we've talked about in the past. I was like I need to make an alter to my childhood.

John Moore 4:33

Oh, that's a that's a fantastic idea. I love that idea.

Heather Webster 4:39

Because what I'm trying to do right now is really connect back because that's where joy and play comes in. Yeah, yeah. And I was like, Oh, I can go through some pictures and they all came up like yesterday, I was posting a picture of my childhood. And so once I moved to New Hampshire is when I really started doing a lot of my healing. I had been reading Ireland for a while. And when I was moved to New Hampshire, I realized how disconnected I had become. Right and, and I had actually gotten to the point where I felt quite depressed and didn't even know it. But I had no interest in going out. I didn't really care to see people, I was just like, happy in my place. But that's not me. And I wasn't really happy. And so I started to get dive into more meditation, I went back to school for health coaching, I did mindful outdoor guide training, and really started to look into how can I reconnect with myself so I can connect with others? Yeah. And a lot around self confidence, self love, and self like self care, but also looking at how I was talking to myself.

John Moore 5:52

Mm hmm. Yeah, that's a good, that's a very good thing to look at. I have lots of clients that I talked to. And that is a major thing, that is a major issue for them. We talk to ourselves in ways frequently that we would never accept from anybody else. And yeah, and we just think that's normal. And it's okay. And it can be really destructive and unhealthy. For sure.

Heather Webster 6:23

Yeah, one of the things I talk to clients about because I've, what I've done is said, Okay, now all this healing, I've done, how can I help women, and so my main focus is helping women, I'll help anybody, but because I just love helping people, but I mainly focus on women, because I think they they have that men have a self talk to you, but I don't understand it as much because I'm not, I don't identify as a man. So for me, I like to focus on knowing where I can identify so I can make sure I support the the people that identify as women. And I mean, we have like 60 to 70,000 thoughts a day, right? And like 9080 80 to no more than that 90 to 95 maybe 98% are like these negative talks that we started when we were younger, and see if the reprogram their habits.

John Moore 7:13

Right, right. It's it's a loop and yeah, you're absolutely right. It's, um,

you know, it's interesting that somebody, I do a lot of work with belief, right, like, what people believe in what people hold to be true. And pretty recently, I don't know, in the past few months, I heard a really good definition of belief. And

you know, and, you know, the I went through the whole Boys Don't Cry era, right, in the whole men. You know, there's only two emotions that are acceptable for men, you know, laughter and anger. That's it. Anything else is a completely unacceptable so we cram a lot of stuff. And I think that most men and I include myself in that bundle, you know, at least earlier in my life, are unaware of what's going on in our heads. Frequently, you know, it's really, really unconscious, because we can't, we can't look at that stuff. It's too painful. And we can't show up as a masculine, right, like, that's a bad thing to be not, uh, you know, and again, this I think this is changing. I see that changing in our culture.

You know, in my girls school, for example, my girls are in high school and there are a lot of transgender children. There are a lot of children who can identify in whatever the way they want and I don't Hear about bullying, happy happening or anything like that, um, that would have been very risky behavior when I was in high school for somebody to identify as a gender that they weren't born, you know, that they weren't born into. Or to, or to be gay or to anything, you know, anything that deviated from the norm was risky. And I mean, physically risky. I mean, you know, it was, it was dangerous. So I'm happy to see some of these changes, and I'm happy. I'm happy that you're working with women or whoever, to, you know, on this on this stuff. Because culture, is this oppressing for sometimes, right.

Heather Webster 10:43

Yeah. And I like to talk to women about how their stories right and, and debunking them, right. So if you have the story of I am, I always fail, right? That's a huge story for women is I'm a failure, I fail at everything we talk about. Okay. That could be a story. So let's see if it is let's talk about the things that you've been successful at. And there's many times I have felt like, when I was going through that time, especially I was everything about what I was going through at that time was about me feeling like a failure. I had had foster children, that when I moved, I had to they Well, I didn't have when I moved, they went to a new foster family that was going to adopt them. So it was a great move for them. Because I was there to foster. But in my head, I was like, Oh, my gosh, you failed. Yeah, no, I didn't. I totally did. And it all stems I think to from when I was a child, but then the biggest failure that I had in my head was my divorce, of how could you not make this happen? How could you not make this and so everything since then, if I didn't succeed, I felt like a failure. And so sitting down with my clients, but also sitting down myself when I went through this, going through all the things I've been successful at. Yeah. And that is and then talking and then coming up with new phrases to say, when you say that thing of like, oh, I fail at everything. Oh, wait, no, I don't I've done this and this and this, to kind of like reframe it. But it can be very tricky at first to catch yourself. Because a lot of it's happening just as you're going through today.

John Moore 12:26

Yeah, yeah. And I'm sure, I'm sure that one of the things that you you probably run into and that I that I've run into with a lot of clients is the word can't. And then they say there's a four letter word, I can't I can't do this, or I can't do that. And, like I will, I will attack that belief, like a rabid dog and go after it and say, Okay, let's, let's stop. And let's look at that. And what does that mean? I can't like I'm physically not able to I'm emotionally not able to, you know, and what's your belief around that? Where does that idea where does that belief come from? That I can't, you know, and it really is a four letter word. Yeah, sure. There are things that maybe I can't do in exactly the way that I want to, you know, I probably can't win the Powerball. But I also don't buy Powerball tickets. So you know that that's very unlikely to happen. But I always say in an infinite and expanding universe, anything is possible, technically, statistically, it's possible. as improbable as it may be, but very frequently, Kant is a product of Well, I always, my parents always told me I wasn't good at this. Or when I tried this before, I wasn't perfect at it. And so I quit. And, you know, I taught I taught martial arts for about little over 20 years, I think, a very long time. And most people quit. Most people who start martial arts or anything like that quit. And I would say that the number one reason that people quit is that they're not a blackbelt on the first day, they're not, they're not, oh, you know, I did this, and I'm not perfect at it. And I'm like, I have been practicing that technique for 20 years, and I am not perfect at it yet. So it's, you know, this whole I have to be perfect thing. Um, I can't ever, quote unquote, fail at anything or, you know, whatever. But we like how much do we learn from our failure? How much do we you know, I went through a really you know, even after my divorce, I went through a really terrific, terrifying, terrific, horrific something I'm trying to work out over here, all the above. I went through I went through a very similar thing and You know, I wound up in a extremely unhealthy relationship with somebody who was abusive in every possible way. And gosh, I was like, Well, I guess I'm just never gonna be in a relationship again. Like, that's just, that's just what's gonna happen. And, you know, I failed clearly at my past two relationships, one of them was 20 years long, and I failed at that. And but, you know, ultimately, I looked at it as, okay, what am I learning from this? What am I learning about my boundaries? What am I learning about? And, you know, I did a whole thing recently about karmic relationships, where you get into relationships, that reproduce some of your old trauma so that you can heal from it. I'm not something I recommend to do consciously, I'm going to purposefully date an abuser so that I can, you know, work through that abuse, like, don't, but recognize that pattern in yourself recognize that that is what's going on. And, you know, we're drawn or sometimes we're drawn to drawn to that so we can we can heal from it.

Heather Webster 16:05

Yeah, I love that. It's been coming up so much recently, kind of what you're talking about in just yesterday, I was listening to another podcast, and they were talking about how you can't succeed without failing. Yeah, right. So when we were learning to walk, we fail many times. So like, every single time, even the things that are innate in things that we're supposed to learn in that we are, it's in our genes to be able to do it takes practice, right? Yeah. And that's why I love like that meditation, yoga, like all those things, call it practice, right? Because it takes time. And going back to the other piece where you were talking about that connection between your thoughts and your beliefs. A lot of that comes into like when you're talking about manifestation as well, which is something that I'm fascinated with. A lot of people are talking about, oh, it's so woowoo. But I mean, no matter what you look, whoever you look at, right? People that pray for, right that there's like, people are manifesting every day, it just depends on how you manifest. So in this moment, I'm manifesting something. Yeah, for my future, right. And I think but in if your thoughts are on the negative, this is something that I love talking about with my clients a lot about, because if they're stuck in that negative your body wants to succeed. Or your soul wants to succeed at what you're thinking, right is your belief in all of that. And so if you're thinking, I'm always gonna fail, you're always gonna fail. Obviously, it's much bigger than that. But if, if you break it down to okay, I feel that this could be possible, and really ingrain it and start living your life that that is happening for you. And kind of letting go of the expectation of how it's gonna happen. Yes, they're gonna come for you. And then that like idea of like, I'm always failing at relationships, right? So I'm saying,

I've been part of it's like, oh, my life is so crazy right now, how can I find somebody but if I switch it to, no, it's possible. There's somebody out there that has a great schedule and everything else, then I'm going to start living that way. I'm also going to feel more confident for myself. And when I face the world, I'm going to face the world as I am lovable. And I it is possible for me to find love. Yeah, yeah, it's, it's interesting.

John Moore 18:28

A couple couple things there that you mentioned, that are like stood out in my brain. So you talked about making an altar to your childhood, and you know how when we were learning to walk, we failed many, many times. And kids don't, kids don't have that thing. Like, we have to learn that we have to learn that failure is bad, we have to learn that we have to learn shame, right? Shame is not ingrained in us. It's not something we're born with. And that's really kind of what it's about. And so when when I was born, I had a number of birth defects. And the doctors told my parents, your son will never walk. And fortunately, my parents had a healthy disdain for for authority figures, as I probably do. And they were like, Screw that, and, you know, looked around and found me the medical help that I needed. And you know, but I didn't know I wasn't supposed to be able to walk. Now think about that with if I were, if I were an adult and something happened and the doctor said, You're never gonna walk again. I don't care what you do. Um, I might take that on. I might, you know, I might believe that. And whether you whether you believe in the whoo aspect of manifestation or not, life becomes a self fulfilling prophecy in the way that I'm going to be. behave according to my beliefs. Now, I like you, I believe we're manifesting everything. And so for example, yeah, you know, if when I'm listening to music, some sound waves are coming into my ear canals, and my eardrums are creating electrical impulses that go back into my brain. But my consciousness is assembling a concert, or you know, an orchestra or a band or a singer, or what have you. So, yeah, there's stuff going on out there. But I'm not I don't know what's going on out there. I only know what's going on in here. Right? And that's, you know, that was something that like for me to grasp. I was like, oh, yeah, like nothing, I'm not aware of anything outside of my consciousness, by definition, right. And so I'm, part of me is creating all of this or CO creating all of this weather, I'm, you know, and then, of course, when you get into shamanism, you start really messing with reality quite a lot. And so you realize how, how plastic it is, and how flexible it is, and how we can tune ourselves to different kinds of channels. And how, in the spirit world where there's no mass, things like time and space break down, just on a, you know, on a physical level. So very, very cool stuff. And I really love your idea of making an altar, I'm going to steal it, make an altar call for make an altar to your childhood. Like, I don't have enough altars around my house, I'm going to add one more somewhere.

Heather Webster 21:40

Right. And it's like, you can see the joy. Or if there was pain in your childhood, you could heal that their journey through meditation type stuff. So I, I think there's or you can go back to like, even further back when that pain wasn't there yet. And it all happened, because, right, so this is like that whole manifestation, but also things happening in order where you can see after the fact how it works. And so for the my podcasting class, they asked us to look at a picture of our childhood and say something to that person to that child. And then yesterday, somebody posted a picture, posted a challenge of add a picture of you as a child. And so I did that. And then I was also like, oh, you know, I need to put that on my Facebook group for my followers, and ask them, What would you say to yourself as a child, and what does the picture say to you? And then I was outside, and all of a sudden, right intuition came through and said, you need an altar for your childhood, because you were so joyful, and playful, and you loved life and being outside and you're so connected to yourself at that point. It didn't mean I didn't have pain, right? And so have this struggles that I had with my, like different things that have happened or whatever. But it was, it was just a very clear, like, looking at those pictures of pure joy was outside too, right? Like, I'm outside in almost all my pictures that I'm smiling with huge, like a huge smile on my face, like Yeah, pigtails with my blonde, like super blond hair. And it was just like, I was so free to be who I was. And so it's very interesting as I start tapping the other piece of that, as you can see, I have so many fascinations around it, but they're all connected, right? Yeah. Intuition is something that I am so fascinated with supporting because I feel like as, especially as women are trying to reach goals or manifest things they need to tap in more. And I think because we're think we're so much out in like, Oh, this is what's happening out there. Right. You don't always listen to that inner self talk. Not the negative self talk, like, yeah, that those messages that are coming all the time.

John Moore 24:02

Yeah, yeah. The universe is talking to us constantly. It will turn the volume up over time, if you don't pay attention to it, sometimes in ways that we don't think are pleasant, but are important to us for our learning. I have had many, such many such lessons. And not to be too you know, I don't want to like stereotype genders here. But um, you know, I think most women would be considered, you know, very intuitive, right, like more in touch. You know, just generally speaking, because of the way our culture is. Women are more in touch with their intuition or in general or have a better sense of their intuition. Everybody has the same intuitive ability, I think, but women have a greater capacity I think to tap into that. I'm part of that is for a terrible reason that we live In this patriarchy where women had to develop that capacity as a survival mechanism, um, but part of it is that there's the you know, the just the aspect of the divine feminine is intuitive, right? And so women, you know, women or people who identify as women are just closer to that naturally. And it really is sort of about finding, finding that balance and and this is not to say that men can't because men men out there you have to embrace you have to embrace the Divine Feminine that's in you. You could be the manliest man on the planet. I don't know. Maybe you to railroad spikes for breakfast, or something. I don't know. Um, whatever the stereotype of the manliest man on the planet that I definitely do not fit into that category, but

Heather Webster 25:49

like Arnold Schwarzenegger back Yeah,

John Moore 25:52

but even Arnold Schwarzenegger now he's got like, he's got like donkeys living in his house and like horses and stuff like in his house, he's, he's a, he's embraced the feminine aspect of of life as well, where he's become a nurturer and a lover of animals and all of these things. But, but men, there's a goddess inside of you, I hate to tell you, there's a God and a goddess inside of everyone. And really, you come into your power when you're able to tap into both aspects of that the Ken Wilber calls it arrows and agave, which are two different words for love. But he uses them as these these masculine and feminine divine impulses, not the distorted way that we represent gender, you know, with toxic masculinity or that sort of thing. But the the divine aspect, which is toxic masculinity is really immature. It's really about boy psychology. And, and that is not manly, when I see that I'm like, yuck, yeah, just gross. But something I want to circle back with you on. Because this has come up as a pretty big, it's one of the main reasons, clients contact me for healing sessions. And it's something that you've mentioned a couple of times. And it's about this sense of disconnection. And this has come up really quite a lot recently. And I think in part because of the pandemic, and we went through periods of lockdown, and even now people are still socially distancing. And, you know, there's a lot of you know, between people who are vaccinated, unvaccinated, there's a lot of stress, there's a lot of divisiveness, particularly in the United States, you know, political stuff, and people are picking sides on on things where they really don't need to be picking sides on. But it's just the way the world. But yeah, I mean, people are really disconnected. You know, and they frequently don't even know from what, right there just, I just feel disconnected.

Heather Webster 28:05

And so I love that you, I love that you brought that up, and I love that that's something that you specifically work on. Yep. And it's, it's actually the whole basis of right my podcast and, and, and really, so when I first started working, I was working on like, this whole idea of like, every woman was like, stereotypical lose weight, right. And that just felt not, it didn't, it didn't fit for me, it felt like a negative way to kind of go at something. And as I started to pull apart, what people were really dealing with was a disconnection from themselves. So there's no way they could be connected with the world around them. Right? Because they were not connected with really what was happening within their own system, in who they were to be able to even think about connecting with their friends, their family, their co workers and the bigger world, right. And so, as I've been kind of working with clients, and really pulling out, what does that look like, it's a very, like holistic piece, right? You can't just say, Oh, I'm going to meditate every day. And that's going to make you connected to yourself. Right. And so we dive into a lot about like, you have to be connected. Nutritionally, you need to be connected with your physical body in whatever way that looks like, even going down to like whether you're exercising or you're intimate with a partner, all of which is right. That's emotional and physical. Yeah.

And like really diving into, okay, how are you feeling about your connection to your job? What is that bringing home every day when you come home at the end of the day? Or what is that connection you have? Like, what are you telling yourself as you're going through these different aspects of your life? And typically, if you heal that connection, you're going to have wellness overall, and that weight that you want to lose is going to come off right Are those right? Because there's those things of like, what is is the Earth really feeding you? And, as we've talked about in the past, right, so my, my love is nature, it will always be, I have a poster behind me with a woman walking into the mountains, and it says, and she lives happily ever after. Right? As she's walking into the mountains with a tree over her head, I have another poster over there that says, and into the forest, I go to lose my mind, and to find my soul. So really, when I think about what has healed me and connected me more than anything, is my connection to nature. And that means food, the food that we eat, am I getting the food from somewhere that I know where it's sourced? Is it coming in a package? And it doesn't mean I'm always perfect? Let's be honest. Yeah, I have treats I have things. But I'm also looking at like, am I getting outside every day? Am I taking time to be barefoot? Am I taking time when I'm outside to just be not racing to get to the summit, which I used to do? Now I'm like, oh, cool tree. Let me go give it a hug. Or let me go talk to it and say thank you for letting me be here. And really being super connected to where we came from.

John Moore 31:19

Yes, yes, our source. And we are we we might feel disconnected from nature, but we are nature we're we're we're animals. We know, we have to, you know, our food might be produced in factories, but it came from animals or plants and or we hope oh, gosh, yeah, there's probably food out there that didn't but um, you know, if you're eating right, your food came from animals or plants, and we're intimately connected, we are a part of it, we're not any different. We have, you know, we live in houses, and we have the internet and electronics and all of these things. But you know, we're still as much a part of nature and I love I love that you mentioned spending time barefoot. i When the when it's warm enough, I always walk out to the mailbox and bare feet. And and because I live under a ton of oak trees, I have to be very careful where I step. And so I have to take it slow. And I have to feel the ground under my feet. So I'm not, you know, stomping on an acorn and hurting my foot. You know, but that connection to the earth is so important. So important.

Heather Webster 32:40

Can I share a story? Yeah, absolutely. So last year, when I was going through the mindful outdoor experience training that I was going through, we had a a job that we had to do, I'm gonna say quotes in job because really, this is, as I get into this, if this is my job, it will be amazing. Well, it will be I'm, I'm putting it out there, that's gonna be amazing. And so we were we had this kind of assignment to go and spend the day on the land. And so we had six hours before we were going to come together for counsel at the end of the day. And so I went to this space that I found not too long ago that I just truly love. It's a preserved area called Castle of the clouds, or castle in the clouds, and I just spent six hours maybe getting two miles maybe. Now I'd probably about two, two and a half miles, right. Because we are doing it very mindfully we take I would take time where I would sit and do a sit spot, I would do journaling and for part for probably about half of it. This was in last November. I decided to go barefoot, so pretty cold out. But I was just like, Okay, let's see if I can what this looks like I can always put my shoes back on. I want to feel more grounded. And as I was going, I was like, Oh, this is so cool. This feels so nice. And then at some point, as I was coming back down the hill, my feet started to hurt. And I was like oh do my shoes on. My feet are so cold. And where am I stepping? I started focusing more on my stepping I started focusing on so much that was my physical body. And I was so I slowed down a minute. I was just like, What do I need to know? What am I trying to like? Do I need my shoes back on. And internally I hear stop focusing on your feet and look up because I was looking at every single thing I was going for. Once I looked up, I saw an amazing bird up in the tree as well. Which helped me remind myself to look up. But once I looked up and started walking, my feet stopped hurting. Yeah, so that I quickly journaled what that meant and like but during that time, I had so many messages that came in like that and it was just like, over and over and over again. They were coming and so it reminded did me I've just like, I need, I need to look up in that moment. But I also need to be looking up and looking for messages and signs or signals coming at me. Right throughout my day.

John Moore 35:13

Yeah. And when you plug in, there's so much there's so much wisdom out there. Um, something related to that, that you mentioned before. You're talking to talking about people who were, you know, we're talking about this disconnection and reconnection thing. And, you know, I was one of these people. And you mentioned people say, Well, I meditate every day. And I was one of those people. And I was going through a crisis, and I'm like, I'm just gonna meditate more. Um, and meditation is fantastic. And I and I highly recommend it, and it has its purposes. But like anything, you can use it to completely unplug and become disconnected. And this is a form of spiritual bypassing, where we're not dealing with being connected, we're not dealing with this, we're like, I'm just gonna, like, clear my mind, which is a good thing to do. But to do it in lieu of plugging in and becoming really connected. And one of the things I love about the path of shamanism that I'm on, is that you really are expected to walk in both worlds, right? You're not just constantly journeying and going out of your body. We do work out of our body, but then we bring it back. And we always have to ground that work in and there's a I wish I could remember the podcast, but there's a woman who does a shamanic podcast, and she always asks, that's great, but does it grow corn? Right? Does it grow? The court does it like what you're doing is fantastic. You're doing all these like, cool. And I love this stuff. I do all kinds of esoteric work with in journeying and, you know, get artwork from you know, that and all kinds of stuff. Um, but at the end of the day, I have to feed my children and live in the world and work with clients and work with students and talk to you on this podcast, which I couldn't probably do in trance. Right.

Heather Webster 37:24

And actually pretty fascinating. Yeah,

John Moore 37:27

I mean, I do I do work. I do some work in trance like that. When I do divination work. Oh, I will. I will work in trance. But I don't know what's gonna come out of my mouth. So it's a little worrying. I mean, one

Heather Webster 37:40

of the things you said to right, like when you're talking about, you can't be in that state all the time, because then you disconnect. And they also think it's like the the direct opposite is true as well. If you do meditation in the morning, and you're like, Oh, I'm done with all being present? Because I did my meditation. Yeah. You like it? That's disconnected to have like, there's a way to be present all day. And being connected by it, right, like being present is being connected. And so it's I think you can't be a meditation all day, unless you're doing like some kind of journey or things like that, where you're like, Oh, what was that other? When you're like, in that, like, you take a weekend and you fast for the weekend?

John Moore 38:26

Oh, yeah. Like,

Heather Webster 38:29

yeah, right. Like, that's very different, where you're saying, This is what I'm doing for the weekend, versus like spreading the day. I'm gonna meditate all day and not talk to anybody. I'm not gonna like, I'm gonna be in this own world, or oh, I meditated already. So I'm done. I checked that box. And now I'm going to do my next thing I have to do versus like, being present, even when you're doing the dishes, and thinking, Oh, how does the water feel? How does it feel when it's warm? How does it feel when it's cold? Like, what does it feel like? How grateful Are you the fact that you have water to wash your dishes? I hate washing the dishes, by the way. So this is for me. It's something I'm working on and being like, Oh, this is great. Um, but be in that state of almost like the gratitude connects you?

John Moore 39:14

Yeah, yeah. So I don't know if you're familiar. Are you familiar with Tom Brown, he wrote the book, the tracker and grandfather and he wrote a series of books. And he, as a boy, he lived next door to a Native American family and the grandfather was an Apache Scout, and trained him and all of the ways of tracking and wilderness survival and all of these things. And gosh, about many millions of years ago, I went and did a course with Tom Brown. I went and I went in, studied, did a wilderness survival and tracking course with him and it was fascinating and we did spiritual work, and we did a sweat lodge at the end and it It was really, it was fantastic. It was just a great week. It was like 114. He can we were intense, but you've just forgot about it, because we were like you were so just tuned in at that time. But he talks about and he refers to the, the grandfather, that was his friend's grandfather, who was the Apache Scout, he called him grandfather out of respect. And he talked about he had walked from somewhere, like, maybe a few 100 miles over a few days, and come back. And the first thing he did was, you know, walk back onto the land, and there was a stream running behind the house. And he just scooped the water up in his hands and held it and was praying to it and tears were coming down his eyes. And like that touched me like, like, when when I look at water, like just water, right? Like, how amazing is water, it's this like, clear substance that gives us life that dissolves almost anything that is soft and soft, but can cut through stone over time, and, and can form any shape and just what you know, and I don't, I certainly don't have the insight into water that this gentleman had. But what a miracle and and like to be grateful for something that we see every day can be challenging. And you might have to look at it from a different perspective. But what a miracle everything is, what a miracle that we can have this conversation, right in different states, what a miracle that, you know, light comes into my retinas and forms a picture of you in my brain, like my consciousness is doing that, right. And I don't care how smart computers get. And I have a, you know, I have a multi decade, you know, experience in computer science, I don't care how smart they get, they will never have the subject until we you know, just start growing brains. They will never have the subjective experience of reality that we have. Yeah, they can recognize faces in a photo or what have you. But they don't have the complete experience that we have, which is emotional, which is, you know, on so many different, so many different levels. It's just ones and ones and zeros. Humans are not binary like that. And so they don't, nor are, nor are any spirits binary like that. And I do want to point out that well, we were talking a minute ago and you were talking about looking up that giant bird this ginormous fat squirrel climbed up on my porch railing was like looking at me like, Yeah, throw some food out for me today or what? So I will I will throw some food out for him after.

Heather Webster 42:57

It's amazing how right like I think if you take the time outside and really tuning in, you start to see those things that come right like that squirrel wants food. The other night, I've finished a meditation and I had fallen asleep during it. It was one of Joe dispenses like hour long meditations that I was just laying down. I was like, You know what, let's just do this. Well, like as they fall asleep. And sometimes when you're you do fall asleep, right, the meditation can be even more powerful. And so I fell asleep. And when I woke up probably about five minutes before it ended. And literally like on the second ended, like everything went quiet. And then there was howling, like super loud howling right outside my window. And so then my puppy starts barking so I know it hadn't been happening. And I'll before her because she would have picked that up. She's like, so fascinated with noises right now. And it was just like, it was so loud. And it was like nipping and playing it. It was in there sounded like at least like 10 of them potentially. So it was a pack and I think of of coyotes, because that's really what I could think of that would be around here. But there's just something about that, that I knew there was some kind of message in there. Right, like this idea of this happened. And then there was a whole pack of coyotes. And when I went to unlatch the window to kind of like hear a little bit louder. They had to be super close because they heard me unlatch it and they stopped. And

John Moore 44:33

yeah, yeah. Yeah. That's fantastic. I love experiences like that. In you know, in the shamanic world, we would treat something like that, particularly where there's a synchronicity in time as an omen. And we would, you know, we would do a journey to interpret that because it's really, and I you know, I caution people from like, looking up what their omens mean, in a book or In, you know, online or whatever, because the it's going to be really individual to you, it's going to be something that's meaningful to you. And they happen in context. So what is going, you know, if I were working with a client and trying to interpret and Omen like that, I would say what was going on in your life when that happened? And what? What were you doing right before that while you were doing this, and this happened? So that's a synchronicity. And then they would do journey work around that to try to suss out if that had, you know, what sorts of meanings that might have for you. But yeah, I mean, that's a beautiful thing. When things like that happen. And nature spirits have a way of, of showing up sometimes as birds or coyotes, packs, or fat squirrels or what, what have you that guy has been stocking up for the winter, we have a ton of acorns right now. So they're, they're eating really well, but I'll still, I'll throw some stuff out for him. And I feed the chipmunks in the squirrels and the lots of birds and stuff here. So it's one of the ways that I connect,

Heather Webster 46:14

when we talk about it in the guiding like when I do mindful outdoor garden, we talk about it being like the more than human world, and like the squirrel people and like the coyote people and, and kind of it's just it fascinates me. I've always been fascinated by animals. In my family. Hawks are big. When my dad passed away, I don't know if I've shared this story with you or not. But when my dad passed away, I returned back to school, back to school, I was teaching it I was a toddler teacher at the time. And it was my first day back after he had passed away. And we were going outside for playtime right outside time or recess. And there's I mean, when you go outside with toddlers, they're not quiet, right? And there were two classes of toddlers. So at least 24 kids out there, plus the infants were out there playing as well. And when I walked out the door with the kids, a hawk came and landed on the school roof, and was watching us the whole time. When I called the kids to line up. We were the only class going in at that time. So when I called them to line up. As we were going into the building it flew away. And I was just like, Okay, dad. Uh huh. Right. Thank you. Thank you for saying you're still here. Like, yeah, and it was just an ever since then. Hawks, Bert, like you said birds are huge in my family. Yeah. My grandmother loved birds. My mom loves birds, my uncle lights Bert like, and so whenever I see a hawk, it always reminds me of my dad, like, that's kind of, or deer, right? Like, and I do talk to my dad a lot. Like when I'm trying to get through things. Like when I was running the marathon and doing that training, and I was going through longer runs, I'd be like, Okay, Dad, go alongside me and get me through this. And it's a nice way to kind of just call in the spirits and call in everything that round you to kind of say like, Okay, right now I'm asking for a little bit of support and push, right. And it works for me.

John Moore 48:17

And our ancestors want to support us even if, you know, I might not have had the best relationship with some of my ancestors. And for a really long time. Might have rejected some of them. But um, you know, we're all the product of who knows how many generations of human beings, you know, 20,000 generations of human beings or more. And so there is strength there. And everybody has everybody has somebody in their, you know, some people or someone in their family tree who was crummy in their lifetime. And so yeah, if you you know, if you do the ancestry.com thing or whatever, you might find that some of your ancestors did some things that you wouldn't find to be okay. Um, but what happens when people pass away is the egoic stuff gets stripped away, the trauma gets stripped away, you know, that sort of thing. And so we can heal that we can heal ancestral wounds. But we can also draw a tremendous amount of strength if you think what had to happen, you know, I think about so my grandmother still alive 105 years old, was born in 1916 in Bath, Maine, no electricity running water or heat. Other than, you know, a pot bellied stove or whatever it was a stove that they cooked on heat their house with and whatever. Um, you know, when I think about surviving that, let alone our ancestors that didn't have houses or whatever the strength, the intelligence, the wisdom, that they must have had the ability to work cooperatively we would not have survived as a species without cooperative hunting, for example, or cooperative planting, for example, we could, it is the thing, you know, it is the thing that you know, some lots of primates have this, but you know, we, we have it, and if we didn't have it, we didn't have these connections back to our ancestors. And they didn't have these strengths and these ability to pull together and work and be connected with with nature and with, you know, the world, they wouldn't have fed themselves themselves and they would have died out or they wouldn't have had shelter, and they would have died out or what have you. And so I think about it that way. And we can draw a tremendous amount of strength from our, from our ancestors, which includes our parents, whether they're, you know, still with us or not, and our grandparents again, and all the way on back all the way back for, you know, many, many 1000s of generations. Although I'm I'm from I'm from Maine, so I frequently joke that my family tree looks like a reef. Somebody I, I do a morning, I do a bit, not not a bit. That's not a good word for it. I do a radio segment once a week here in Maine, where callers, you know, people call in and I do dream interpretation for them. And very recently, a man called in and you know, I just get their first name. Oh, this is Sean. Hi, Sean, tell me about your dream. And he's like, oh, you know, we have the same last name where we might be related. Like, we're both in Maine. Man, we're, we're, you know, I would assume whether or not we had the same last name, we're cousins somewhere. It's a It's not that biggest.

Heather Webster 51:47

It's funny, right? Like, you have to be connected. Somehow it no matter what, right? If you go back far enough, I reached out to recently I went to where my dad's family is from in Vermont. And I was exploring kind of the cemeteries, everything for cemeteries, they're just fun to watch around. But if but when you get to see like, Okay, here's where one of your ancestors was buried, right? And I started to see that there was a plaque for somebody in the same area connected for one of another Webster, right? And so I was like, Oh, I wonder if we're related because that person had died yet. Right. So like, it was like a black thing where they're going to be rested. Right? So I actually contacted him. And I was like, maybe related. And so as we went back and forth, there wasn't a clear connection. But we think we started to find a little bit of a connection. And for me, I was really fascinated. It was just interesting. He's a lot older, because I'm so I'm trying to tap into people that maybe, because we have a super small family. And so it's always nice to see, is there maybe some other people out there that you're connected with in ways that you don't even know? And yeah, I mean?

John Moore 53:01

Well, Mike, you know, my grandfather was one of nine kids. So I have many, many, many. Second, third, fourth cousins. Second, you know, great aunts, and uncles, and all of that sort of thing. And there's, you know, there's fascinating stuff there. And some of their, you know, going back and doing, you know, some ancestral research there, there are families with, you know, 13 kids, 14 kids, so there's, you know, think about how many, like, how many people I'm related to, just in this area alone is an NGO, we've been here since, you know, that side of my family has been in Maine, since the 1600s. So, you know, close to 400 years, and that's a lot of generations. And so there's a lot of people that I'm related to, not all with the same last name, but there's a lot of there's a lot of Moore's out there that are, that are probably related to me. And I found I have found cousins on Ancestry and stuff that I didn't know about. One, one kid, I found out kid, he's my age is actually older than I am. But I think of him as a kid because I played with this guy, when I was young, between the age of like five and 10. And then he moved away moved out of state. And just found out that we're cousins, like, crazy through one of these, I can't remember who was ancestry or 23andme, or whatever, but came up as a relative. I'm like, I haven't talked to that guy in, you know, almost 40 years. Like, that's crazy. So, so yeah, yeah, it's we're, we're all connected.

Heather Webster 54:43

And that's where it comes into, like, what's the what? Why was, why was it that you're supposed to play with them as a child and now you're like hearing about them again, right? And are you supposed to reconnect and I'm finding that a lot and part of that's helping with social media, right, so social media has its own ups and downs of what Yes, what is great for but one of the things is really connecting people that you might have lost touch with. But then trying to dive into that more of how can you make those connections more real? I actually reached out to so one of the times I was feeling like that failure piece around the kids, when I had them, I reached out to a friend of mine said, Okay, your social media looks like everything's perfect. Just let me know, is everything perfect for your kids? And she's like, Oh, no, no, no, we you don't see like a minute before that they were screaming at each other and fighting. And so write those things around, like, what is reality? And what is what is people and I think that's another reason why people might be feeling even more disconnected with themselves in the world is that there's this idea of what is perfect, and there's no words. Perfect,

John Moore 55:56

right? So social media. Yeah, I mean, I agree. Like, I have reconnected with lots of people, I would not have been able to reconnect with otherwise great friends from the past that, you know, we've all moved around and done different things. And, but yeah, I mean, so social media is our people's highlight reels, right? Um, I don't post stuff about my kids, when I've had issues with them. You know, but like, when I'm proud of them, I'm gonna post a photo of that, but I, you know, and I've had clients, you know, they're like, Oh, well, I gotta do this, I gotta do this. Because I see, you know, and I remember I worked. You know, I do coaching as well. And I worked with this woman over a couple years, actually. And she was really upset that she was single and couldn't find somebody. And I'm like, Well, you know, what, what's the Russians? Tell me more about that? She's like, Well, I'm just, you know, I'm online. And all of these people are in these fantastic relationships. And I'm like, Are they though? Are they do know for sure that they're all happy? Do you know that they're all healthy relationships? Do you know that? The relationships not you know, and hopefully, some of them are, but you have no way of knowing. And I don't know who there's, there's a quote, and I wish I wish I knew who said it, but I'll look it up, maybe. But comparison is the death of joy. Right? When you start looking at, oh, what's this person doing? And I fall into that trap? I fall into that trap. I'm like, Ah, you know, and I'm trying to get, you know, I'm trying to get, you know, I've got this podcast, and I have an app that just came out, and I've got a YouTube channel, and I've got, like, I'm doing all this stuff. And I'm like, wow, you know, I'm working on a, I'm working on a book and I'm like, why hasn't the shift network called me to do the summit on shamanism? Haven't they heard of me, I see all these people, what do they do? You know, and I'm like, I gotta stop that. That's just crazy. I'm on my path. And I'm going to do what I'm doing. And I'm going to be successful in the way that the universe wants me to be successful. But, and I got to stop beating myself up because I'm, you know, these the, see these people who've been doing this for, you know, some of them longer than I've been alive. Okay, maybe they have maybe, maybe they've been, you know, have a right to some more perks than I, you know, that. I'm working hard. But, you know, I'm also trying to work smart and not. But yeah, I mean, social media can connect us and it can also disconnect us. And it has, unfortunately, some of the stuff particularly that's going on with Facebook. You know, they have been purposefully stirring up divisiveness with some of their their algorithmic stuff, and they know that they're doing it. And I think that that's really unfortunate. That that's been that that's been going on I have I've lost friends on social media. I think probably because, I mean, sometimes like somebody show, turns up turns out to be very racist. And I'm like, um, we might have been friends in high school, but I cannot have that in my life. That's not going to work out. I have mixed race children, and there can be no part of racism in my life. You know, so that's, that's something and then I did, I looked up an old friend from junior high, when I moved back to me and I lived in Boston for for 20 years. And, um, when I moved back, I looked up an old friend from junior high and found them on the sex offender registry, and that was clearly not, you know, a friendship that I needed to rekindle. So there's, you know, there's a little bit to be said for that. But, um, I, you know, like to use tools to connect and I hope that I'm trying to be more people useful about the way I communicate with people and you know, less divisive, it's hard. I'm, I'm an opinionated person. You know, well, I'm

Heather Webster 1:00:10

right. It's why we do what we do, right? We want to get the the, we want to get the message out to everybody. And at the same time, we're going to lose people potentially. That might have been, oh, we like your message, but we don't like that message. And it's, and that's okay. And I'm the same way if, if, if I see that you are racist, if I see that there's some hatred towards a certain group of people, any of those kinds of things. It's like, that's not okay with me. And I'm okay to lose those people. But at the same time, when when you see things happening on social media, you're like, Oh, I was unfriended. I wonder why. Right? And so you go into your inner talk of like, why did they unfriend me? What did what happened? And oh, did I say something incorrect? And then going back to like, Wait, what is my message? Yeah, am I who do I want to be? I obviously wasn't the right person for that person. The same reason I unfriended that other person because they were racist. And like, knowing obviously, very different reasons, but knowing that you can't be there for everybody, and sometimes social media, because you watch all these people with so many people who have so many followers, and, and then you go in you realize that they bought their followers? Oh, yeah, those kinds of things. And it's just you just have to be like, Okay, I'm going to center myself. Who am I? Where am I going? Right? Yes. Like, somebody was saying the other day, I was listening to this seminar. And she was talking, and she's really well known for just being an amazing speaker, and really just empowering people. And she said, Yeah, somebody asked me if I wanted to be on Oprah. And she goes, who mean Oprah to be the person that you have to be on that show? And right, Oprah is just a person. Right? Right. Do I have to strive to be on Oprah. Now, I would love to be on Oprah. She said, but she's like, but that's not what I'm striving for. I'm striving for getting my message out and connect. Yeah.

John Moore 1:02:16

Yeah. So it's, it is like, yeah, it's, you know, Oprah, as lovely and wonderful as she is, um, you know, talking about not her as a person, but her as the entity of the show and the business and all of that. It's a tool to get the message across. But why has that big? Yeah, for real? Why has that become the arbiter of how we measure success? And can't we measure success? All in our own each individual way? And it's hard because there's pressure, there's a lot of cultural stuff about what success looks like, is it financial? Is it? I have so many followers, I've seen the point of like, people buying their followers, I've seen like brand new Instagram accounts with 60,000 followers, I'm like, okay. You're not a famous person. So it wasn't, it wasn't like Oprah started an Instagram account and got a million followers that I could understand this is just some random person that also like pops up with 60,000 followers? And is that number a measure of success? And are you really getting a message to those people? Because it paid them to, you know, or however it works? I'm not exactly sure. I know that I've seen stuff where you can pay for a certain number of followers. They can't, they're either not real or whatever. But they're not interested in what you have to say,

Heather Webster 1:03:38

right? They're not your ideal client, right? Or you're like the person you're wanting to reach. Right?

John Moore 1:03:42

And I'd love to be on Oprah. But I don't know that Oprah's audience would care about what I have to say, you know, you know, I would I never pass up an opportunity to speak to anybody, but but, you know, would that be successful for me, you know, or whatever. So just a brief, brief, funny story. So I used to live in Boston, and a really good friend of mine worked at Harvard University. And she would every morning, stop into this cafe and get breakfast, same place. It was a very popular local place. It turns out that Ben Affleck used to like to go there when he lived in Boston. And Oprah did a special where she went back to Boston with Ben Affleck and he took her around and brought her into this cafe. Well, for about six months after that, my friend could not stop in and get breakfast there because there were lines out the door. And everybody wanted to order what Ben Affleck ordered which was something odd that you know, off the menu or something. And these these poor, not poor but like the it was two brothers that ran this cafe. They like within two days after that episode aired, they ran out of food One of them was getting married. And there were like, we didn't know how to manage. Like, we didn't know how to deal with this, like it was overwhelming. And again, like, yeah, it was this huge boost for their business for six months, or however long it was. But are those people going to become the lifelong client? Or customer? Like my friend is who goes there every day to get breakfasts day in and day out for years to get breakfast? So

Heather Webster 1:05:29

great. Yeah, yeah. What a great story, because they also could have potentially lost their ideal people.

John Moore 1:05:35

Yeah, yeah. Well, they lost, you know, I mean, she went back eventually. And this is the only reason I know this story is because she talked to that she knows the guys who own it. And they're like, they were like, just days, they're like, oh, my gosh, Oprah. I don't know. But they didn't, you know, and they, I don't know if they knew they were coming in or not. But they definitely were not prepared for what happened. And I know, like similar things where I know, people got a product, the people were manufacturing a product, they got it listed on QVC. And they couldn't keep up with the demand. They can produce it quickly enough for the sales for QVC. So QVC dropped them. So that was that they're done. They can't go on QVC anymore. So yeah, there's this thing about like, instant success, and then instant fizzle, right? And the the effect that that can have on people where when you're reaching and connecting with the right, the right people, the people, and whatever you do, if you do it, well, there are people out there that want want to want to connect with you and receive the benefits of that. And, you know, you and I are both people who have our hearts in the right place. We're both really into helping other people. And we can't help everybody we can't, there are people who would never accept the way that I help people. And that's fine. That's not my Those aren't my people. But I hope, you know, I hope they find what they need in another way. But that's fine. You know, it's cool. I can't, you know,

Heather Webster 1:07:07

it almost sounds like a huge like lesson right there for the person who is the like, the cafe owner. And then like the QVC. And I think of people that like, win the lottery, right, and they lose it instantly. And I think about kind of what's that lesson overall of if you're wishing or manifesting for something more greater than what you're supposed to get. It's almost like some people might get that and then have to be taught the lesson. Yeah, you gotta slow it down a little bit, or seeing what, where you are and what's best for you, your business, the people around you. Yeah, yeah. Not that I wouldn't want to win the lottery.

John Moore 1:07:50

I think I wouldn't turn that down either. Well, we have, I'm looking at the clock, I talked to him for a very long time. And I know that you have something to get to in very shortly. And I don't want to, I want to respect your time. But it has been, you know, again, like when I came on your podcast, we just could talk forever and never run out of things to talk about. So what I'm going to propose is that we should probably in the future, do each other's podcasts again, because we've clearly have more stuff to talk about. And I hope that I hope that that that works for you. This has been just a fantastic and fascinating conversation. And I want to thank you for coming on, but also how before I forget how it you know, so people are interested in what you do. How do they find you? How do they get in touch with you?

Heather Webster 1:08:39

Sure, yeah. And it's been an amazing pleasure as you as we've talked about in the past, like Time flies when we're having conversation, I would love to kind of keep this partnership going. Yeah. And so they can find me, I have a website, HeatherWebsterWellness.com. You can find me on Instagram @HeatherWebsterWellness. You can also find my Facebook group at Heather Webster wellness. And but you can find all of that if you go to Instagram, I have a link tree link in there where a lot of this stuff is listed.

John Moore 1:09:10

And I'll put links up in the show notes. So depending upon how you listen to this, it you know, it might not show up in iTunes or something but you can go into the show notes and there will be there will be at least the URL and stuff for each of these things. So

find it there and definitely, definitely check Heather out. She's got a lot of really, really very interesting and cool stuff going on that that that I jive with. And just once again, thank you for. Thanks for coming on.

Heather Webster 1:09:42

Thank you. Alright, so

John Moore 1:09:43

you're gonna hear some music and then then the outro and then we'll

Announcer 1:10:18

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

Ep37 Magic, Manifestation, and the Law of Attraction

Announcer 0:29

Hello, and welcome to speaking spirit where we talk about all things spiritual. Your host, John Moore is a shamanic practitioner and spiritual teacher. And now here's John.

John Moore 0:45

Hello, hello, everybody. Nice to talk to you again.

I know. So I, I recorded a podcast not that long ago, but it had been about three weeks since I recorded one. For good reasons I have been, I wrote a chapter of a book that is being published, I had a writing deadline, and fortunately met it. And I'll have more details about that, as the book nears publication, but it's a book about relationships. And I wrote a chapter about sacred relationships and how to deepen your relationship spiritually. So that's coming up. I've also been doing for some, some reason, I'll maybe talk about that a little bit today. I've been doing a lot of radio and podcast guest appearances. I have another one coming up tomorrow, I had several last week, I've got another one on Friday. So you know, it's fun, it's nice. I love to spread the word about the things I love to talk about, namely, spirit and shamanism and all kinds of stuff. So today is Well, I'll tell you this, it is very early, this is earlier than I usually record these, but I woke up earlier this morning. And I decided to do a little reading, perusing, you know, perusing the web as it were, and reading some things and, you know, I like to know, my mind goes in different places very early in the morning and very late at night. And so like, you know, and I am, though I teach shamanism and I talk a lot about spirituality. I'm a very scientifically minded person, I actually have I have a master's degree in a scientific field. You know, and I spent decades working in computer science, I realized anything, usually anything with the word sciences, and it is an art and not a science. And that's a little bit what computer science is, but you know, it, it informs my thinking, you know, the way that I solve problems and the way that I think algorithmically, they beat that stuff into you. So I got up and I started reading today. And there was an article in sort of a, you know, popular scientific website where they put out a lot of stuff about you know, new, new thinking around things, and new, you know, really big movements in science and that sort of thing. So this article came up for me this morning, and I think it's fortuitous because I just have been talking about things like magic and manifestation and law of attraction. And in fact, that's what I'm going to be talking about today. I'll call this podcast, magic manifestation and the law of attraction. And so anyway, this article came up, and I always pay attention to synchronicities when things come up better a theme or a rhyme with something I'm already looking at or doing. And this article says, is human consciousness creating reality? Interesting idea, scientifically. Not so new in the spiritual realm. And so this is an article about an article in how they write popular articles about science articles for for us lay people to understand although I very frequently will go and download, you know, science articles that I read, read popular articles about because sometimes they are misrepresented, but this is basically A paper about a paper that was put out by a bunch of authors, including a man named Robert Lanza, who is an expert in stem cells and regenerative medicine. And he, I don't know if he created or popularized the theory of biocentrism that says that consciousness is the driving force for the existence of the whole universe, particularly well, in his perspective, biological consciousness. Um, you know, this is where I might differ a little bit biological consciousness is I think biology is a receiver of consciousness more than a creator of consciousness, but we can argue there. So anyway,

the the argument is that, you know, the universe kind of exists as a field of quantum probability is there's all of the, you know, quantum foam underneath everything. And that by observing or you know, observing things, by having things come up in our consciousness, we collapse the probabilities. Right? So there's the whole Schrodinger his cat thought experiment, which isn't quite what people think it is, it was actually a way that Schrodinger was making fun of, of, of quantum, you know, some quantum ideas of, you know, super, what we call superpositions, things can be a thing and not a thing at the same time. And Schrdinger's cat, you have a cat in the box, and there is some device in the box that is, you know, 5050, whether it poisons the cat, you know, releases poison gas into the box and kills the cat. And until you open the box up, and observe the cat, the cat is 50% alive and 50% dead, but when you observe the cat, the cat, you know, the, the reality collapses, the probability collapses, and your cat is definitely alive, hopefully, um, you know, and, and that, that's kind of the idea that we observe, or our consciousness solidifies reality out of all of these probabilities. My problem with Schrodinger cat is it assumes the cat isn't conscious. And, you know, this is a very human centric as is this article, very human centric, that it's human consciousness that is creating the universe. And I can tell you, I can tell you that, you know, no matter how you feel about animals, whether you eat them, or wear them or a vegan, or what have you, the animals are indeed conscious. So our plants and trees and rivers and rocks, it's consciousness on a very different level, than we might experience it, but it is indeed consciousness. And I think my experience has that the entire universe is a field of consciousness. So it's very haughty, it's very human centric to say that, Oh, it's, you know, it's human consciousness that's creating the universe. I think consciousness Yes. Is human consciousness, all of it? Certainly not. If a tree falls in the woods, and nobody's around to hear it, does it truly make a sound? Well, you know, are there birds in the forest and ants and aardvarks or whatever, you know, all of these things. So. But, you know, the important point here is that these are scientifically minded people putting forth a theory and I, you know, I don't know how they might prove that scientifically, but there are some very smart people out there designing cool experiments. And, you know, maybe someday we'll, you know, we'll see that that, you know, be able to have some more scientific proof that this is the case, it's, it's, you know, it's a theory, it's hypothesis. I realized those two things are different. But, you know, it's an idea that, you know, that jives with a lot of spiritual belief. Right, going back to the beginning of time, the beginning of human evolution and consciousness and religiosity for lack of a better term spirituality. When everybody was shamanic, no. Sounds interesting to me that everybody was practicing shamanism. before, before we had anything else. Um, so let's talk about this a little bit. And so I have this, I have a couple of working theories myself. And one of those theories is that the deeper you go into anything, the more spiritual it becomes the fine. Pardon me. As you may know, if you listen to these, I don't edit them. So you'll get my little early morning. voice cracks and stuff. I'm just a sip of coffee here.

A little warm liquid anyway. So the deeper you go into anything, the more spiritual becomes this includes absolutely anything in that. And I think that includes physics. I think physics is very mechanical, right. And I can tell you that, you know, Isaac Newton himself thought that the mechanical nature of the universe was proof of God's great design, yes, he was coming from a Christian perspective. But we should note that Isaac Newton, at least 10 to 15% of his journals were about experiments and alchemy. So he was interested in how the universe worked, and saw that, you know, this universe is very orderly, and that a lot of it was proof that of Intelligent Design. You know, fast forward to, you know, quantum physics and that sort of thing. And we get into really spooky things like quantum entanglement where two particles can affect each other, over great physical distances with no known connection between them. Right, we've sent we've essentially teleported information in the lab, through, you know, we've sent information from one place to another through quantum tunneling, without passing any of the space in between. You know, and we're just starting, we're, we are pre infants, we're basically in the fetal stage of, of figuring this stuff out and learning about it from a scientific perspective. But lots of you know, lots of the people who worked on things like the nuclear bomb and, and back in the day, and stuff like that we're sort of started to, you know, think in more spiritual terms, you know, still putting things in, in terms of physics, but stuff just becomes more about consciousness and the way that the Universe works, and the way that consciousness affects the universe, so consciousness affects the universe. We know this, we know that observation can change physical reality. If you are unfamiliar, there's something called the double slit experiment that shows if we, you know, pass light through a pair of slits in a piece of cardboard or something, we can cause that light to behave as waves or particles, depending upon how we observe it. How does light know that we're observing it? You know, how does it know? So consciousness or measurement in scientific terms, affects physical reality in ways that we can experiment with and use and not really explained at this point. Someday, perhaps. So let's talk a little bit about magic. I've given my working definition of magic before, but I will give it again, I always like to define my terms, just so you know what I'm talking about, not because my terms are better than anybody else's. But if I use a word in a way that's different, you know, it might cause some misunderstanding, and a lot of the ways that I think about things and use them or maybe not so common. So, magic. So you know, there have been lots of definitions of magic. I'm not talking about stage magic, though. I love stage magic. I love to watch stage magic, magic, beautiful performances. There's lots of new stuff being done. I grew up on David Copperfield and Doug Henning and Penn and Teller, um, but magic, real magic, the stuff you know, we might think of it as witchcraft, or wizardry or sorcery or all of these things, from a sort of non fictional perspective.

And I'll you know, paraphrase Alistair Crowley a little bit who was an I will say, an infamous magician, by all accounts, not a very nice guy but wrote some very seminal text that are still being used today to study occultism. And that his, you know, his wave of thinking called Thelema still exists, there are still people who practice it. So anyway, he, he said that magic is causing change in accordance with will. And, you know, I think that is a good, I think it's a good start. I think it's too broad. It's too inclusive, maybe because I can, you know, I can ask someone to pass me the salt, and they do. And is that a magical act? Maybe not? We probably wouldn't consider that magic. Maybe you do? Maybe. But I wouldn't, I would consider that a very ordinary act. Unless that unless the, you know, I was asking a god or goddess, for example, to pass the salt. And that worked. So I'm going to, you know, I'm going to change it up a little bit my definition is using non ordinary non physical means to influence reality. Influence, right. So in physics, in quantum physics, are talking about these fields of probability. And I think the things that we do that could be considered magic are working on influencing probabilities. Right? We can we can push probability around, you know, can I, you know, hold up my hand and do some magic and have a gold coin appear in my hand. Um, you know, that is a very improbable Act, is very improbable that that would occur. However, it's not impossible. According to physics, through quantum tunneling, there is a very small, infinitesimally small, but nonzero chance that that might occur. And, you know, maybe there are magicians who are powerful enough to do that I have not witnessed that particular thing, although I have seen some things that defy reality, you know, changed, changed my view on how reality works. But that's, you know, it's, it's much harder to influence things that are probabilistically very impossible. So or not very possible, I should say, not impossible. So, for example, let's talk about a little bit about law of attraction, which people know is a, you know, popular method of, you know, popular description of some Olds thinking that, you know, you can about this very thing that you can affect reality based on your thinking and your feeling. And this is all, you know, there's a truth to that, and I do like the pot, you know, the secret and all of that stuff. But I do think that that led people to sitting around and wishing real hard, and then wondering why the law of attraction wasn't working for them. And I boil it down in a nutshell for you, right here in this podcast. So hang on, I'm going to teach you how to get the law of attraction to work for you, or work better for you anyway. So you know, really, you know, if the law of attraction if manifestation, and magic all work, they're all things they exist. How come I can't sit on my couch and think real hard and win the lottery. Right. So first of all, I don't play the lottery. I don't, I don't buy lottery tickets. So that would make that next to impossible. Very, very improbable. But let's take take something like the Powerball which is if you don't know the Powerball is a huge multi state lottery here in the United States they've had jackpot some of their biggest jackpots are like half a billion dollars can't even imagine. So your odds of winning Powerball are like one in 300 and something million to win the jackpot that is a lot in and it's chosen by you know, having these physical balls that roll you know, that roll out of the machine that are picked very much physically at random.

So beyond the sheer odds of not winning, there is the you know, the the physical randomness, the chaos in the system, and trying to influence that by thought alone is challenging, it's far easier to influence things that are more probable, right? Like you might manifest finding a new job, you know, that sort of thing. So, let me talk about if you've tried law of attraction and manifestation, and it hasn't really worked for you. Um, let me explain a little bit why that might be and how you might have better results and things you want to manifest. And I will say that I don't like, ultimately, I think anything is possible in an infinite and expanding universe. Just probabilistically anything is literally possible. Probable is another story, right? So, you know, this is not to say you have to try to manifest easy things, but I have, I've worked in ways where you start with small things, and you manifest larger and larger and larger things, and I have experimented with that successfully in my life. And someday I will talk about that in, in a, in a podcast episode, not this one. But it's kind of a long story. Um, but you know, let's say I want to manifest a new job, I'm, you know, I'm out there looking for work, and I want to want to find a new job, you're going to increase your chances of something, if you get into congruence. And congruence or alignment means that all of your systems, or at least most of them, are working together. So let's say that I do want to find a new job. And I, you know, I want to manifest a new job. But I don't put my resume out there. And I don't go any job interviews. Well, that's not very congruent behavior, and my heart might be in the right place. But the chances of a job falling in my lap like that are very, very slim, I'm, I'm decreasing the probability that that's going to happen. Excuse me, if I want to manifest that I lose weight. But I eat two whole pizzas every day for lunch. That's going to be very challenging. I'm going to be moving out of congregants and alignment. So you know, the idea that you don't have to do anything physical, and you can manifest your dreams is nice, that will be nice if things work that way. And sometimes they do. But you're decreasing your odds. You want the odds to be in your favor, when you want to manifest something. So if you want to manifest, you know, the love of your life, you may have to get out there and meet people, you lock yourself in a closet, and never go out. Maybe people will send the firemen in to break down your door and one of them will be the love of your life. I don't know. But the chances of that happening, decrease. So you can so you know, magic manifestation Law of Attraction is all about dealing with probabilities, it's all about increasing probabilities until things happen for you. And, you know, there there does seem to be a skillet it to where some people can just step into the flow of the universe because they get they get what they want almost at a thought almost had an intention. Sometimes this takes practice because we have all kinds of stuff going on in our thoughts, we have unconscious thoughts, which is actually the majority of our thoughts, we have fears we have all kinds of things. So if you think about a human being, think about yourself as a as a system of systems, we have a body which is itself a system of systems because it has circulatory, nervous, digestive, reproductive, all of these different systems, endocrine system that work together, we have a mental system which has many, many parts.

We have spiritual systems, which have many, many parts. And if you know if I were driving down the road in my car and I'm trying to drive straight but I turn the wheel to the right So my two tires are facing to the two front tires are facing to the right, I am not going to go straight. So if I think really hard that I want to lose some weight, I want to drop some body fat. You know, that is my mental system. And I might even have some emotion behind that. You know, I might even get into spiritual alignment with that. But if I eat a couple of pizzas every day, I'm probably not going to lose weight, because a good portion of my system, in fact, the system I'm trying to influence, which is my body is out of alignment with that. Okay, if I buy if I pay for a gym membership, but I never go to the gym, I'm not going to get into shape. And I might do all the magic in the world, but it's far easier for me just to show up to the gym. That being said, if I want to lose weight, and we know that most people fail most diets, they'll succeed for a while, and they'll fail, they'll put all the weight on plus, plus more. And, you know, a big part of that is they're not bringing their mind and emotions along for the ride. So they're influencing physical reality. So again, like success in any endeavor, is much easier when you get get into alignment. When you take divine inspired physical action, it helps things in the physical realm. So if you're trying to affect physical reality, the easiest way to do that is by in physical reality in the plane, in the plane of existence where things are. That being said, you know, the spiritual plane, the astral plane, the mental plane, the causal plane, all interact, they all interact with the physical, and they all interact with each other. And so you can apply influences there. This is why we light birthday candles, make a wish and blow them out. Right, this is a wish, it's it's an act of magic, whether you think it is or not. This is why we throw a coin in a wishing well. And that is sort of about making offerings. It's really making offerings to like, you know, if it's, if it's a natural well, especially, it's about making offer offerings to water spirits. You know, but so you know, that you can affect physical reality through thought through emotion through spiritual means. But it's going to be easier if you do some physical work as well if you get into if you get into action. And I realized this runs counter to what a lot of people want to happen. And notice, I said, it gets easier. I didn't say it becomes possible. Because I do think that there have been times in my life where I have been able to create circumstances that I didn't do anything for physically. But I did a lot of spiritual work. So I'm not dissuading you from doing that kind of thing. But if you're finding, you know, you need to treat this stuff as an experiment. And most magicians, if you read the works of like, people doing alchemy and magic and stuff, most solo magicians from Renaissance back. were experimenting with stuff. Let me try this, see if it works. Let me try that, see if it works. So if you're not getting the results you want, you need to change your methods. And I'm trying to give you some pointers here. But the better you can get yourself into alignment and congruence, the more likely, the more probable your outcomes are going to be what you desire.

So, you know, you got you got to put it out there. So you know, I do this, I do this podcast, for example. This is a labor of love. I just like a lot. I like talking like I'm talking about things that I'm really interested in. But it is also a way for me to reach out to the world and get more people to know me. And you know, it's it's a bit of a marketing tool. I'm not going to be too shy about that, although I don't use it strictly as that and I don't really, I don't push don't push anything, I hope. I hope it doesn't come across that I'm pushing anything here because I don't want to I don't want it to be like that right but you know, I'm putting my And my effort out there into the world. And through this podcast through other means I, you know, write a blog, I have a YouTube channel, all kinds of stuff. So, you know, this is stuff, you know, this is stuff that I do that enhances my, my business, I'm putting energy out into the world, I'm doing physical things I'm, you know, getting my mind and spirit into alignment. And so lots of opportunities opened up for me, not just because of this podcast, but in parts, I get opportunities to speak in the radio, I get opportunities to guess on other people's podcasts, more people hear about me, more people contact me for for different reasons. You know, I get opportunities to contribute to books and write articles and do all kinds of stuff. Because there's some alignment there. With what I'm doing spiritually, I'm also putting effort out into the effort out into the world. So, you know, anything we do to influence the world around us through non ordinary means, and this is where is where I think magic differs than from other things, because I can influence like, if I go buy a lottery ticket, I'm influencing my chances of winning the lottery not buy a whole lot, well actually buy a whole lot because my chances were practically zero before but I'm increasing my chance from like, practically zero to one and 300 million, which is close enough to zero that I don't make an effort there. But um, you know, going and buying a lottery ticket isn't an act of magic. But if I were to do some ritual around there in attempt to influence, you know, bring those odds, align 300 million points of data to match my exact ticket and when that would be an act of magic. So any non physical, non ordinary things you do. So, you know, a lot of people might differ with my definition. But I think things like prayer are acts of magic, I think blowing up birthday candles or, or throwing a quarter in a wishing well, or I think shamanism is definitely magic, witchcraft, Reiki, all of these things are magical acts. They're meant to use non ordinary non physical means to influence reality, to bring health to bring whatever, you know, part of the reason people might not see it that way is that there's been 1000s of years of anti magic propaganda out there, like you don't do magic, because you are that's from the devil. Oh, but here, make an offering and light a candle and pray so that your loved one can recover in the hospital. But that's not magic. But, you know, we can differ but I will beg to differ at that point. You know, if you're, if you're praying for certain results, or you're praying even just for enlightenment, that's, that's a form of reality. So So in my definition, the use of non physical non ordinary means to influence reality, I didn't just say physical reality. So things we do to influence our mental reality and our spiritual reality and the different realities that we shamanic practitioners tend to, you know, visit other realms of reality. Those are acts of magic as well.

Hmm. So I didn't, you know, I'm not just saying physical reality. So there are lots of things we can do. There's dream work, right? We can influence dreaming reality. There is, you know, stuff we can do. We can wear, you know, talismans to help us increase our mental ability to pass a test or, you know, do some, you know, do some work or we can have something to increase our luck. And in many spiritual systems, luck is a an energy, it's a force. It's part of our energy anatomy. There's let's talk about luck. I'll do another podcast about luck. That'll be fun. Maybe I'll do that around. St. Patrick's Day. honor my Irish heritage looks a big deal and In my, you know, my Norse ancestors, my, you know, my Viking ancestors. There's, you know, there's an energy anatomy there that lock, there's something called the hummingbird, which is like this energy backpack that carries around your luck. Yeah, I'll do a whole podcast about that at some point. Talk about luck. That'll be fun. So but, you know, I wanted to talk about, you know, magic manifestation law of attraction, law of attraction. There is, you know, there's something to be said, there's a lot to be said for it in the kind of fake it till you make it. Attitude, right. So, act as if the thing you want is already present. Right. So if I want to manifest a new job, I meditate, I pretend I pretend like that job is already present, I imagine what it's like, I feel the emotions that I would feel when i As if I have this now. And the reason why that is and can be an effective tool is that it tends to promote this congruence, it tends to make us act and think and emote together. The problem comes, there is sometimes a problem. There is some research to show that positive, that unwarranted positive thinking, This isn't to say, Oh, I'm having a rough time. But I know I'm going to make it through here that is positive thinking, that's, you know, that works really well. But, um, you know, if I'm being evicted from my home, and about to live on the streets, and I'm thinking to myself, I live in a mansion, I live in a mansion, I live in a mansion. Um, at some point, I'm going to create some significant amount of cognitive dissonance there. And that has been shown in some research to actually lead to severe depression. So, um, you know, and in my mind is a form of spiritual bypassing. And spiritual bypassing is sort of pretending, pretending like we don't have any problems, because we're spiritual people see this all the time, it's maybe maybe the number one problem out there with spirituality. Oh, I am above anger, and I have no bad feelings because I have eliminated them. I am, you know, a level three master of spiritual emotion, etc, etc, etc. This isn't meant to put anybody down or be pejorative, but it it has become a problem, particularly in more New Age circles, where people don't recognize what's actually going on within themselves. And they're living

kind of in a deluded way. And using spirituality as a crutch. In the same way that people use drugs to escape reality. People can use spirituality to escape reality. One of the things I really like about the path that I'm on shamanism is that is very grounded. And, you know, even though I spend a significant amount of time in non ordinary reality, I am expected to walk in both worlds. And, you know, there's, there's an expression and I don't know where it came from, but I heard it on a shamanic podcast once, and I am so I'm sorry that I can't attribute this to anybody. But you know, it was a woman podcaster I can't even remember her name. And I feel bad about that. But if I can figure out where this came from, I heard it years ago, if we can figure out where this came from, I will, I promise, I will add some notes to this podcast or something. crediting people because I do like to give people credit where it's due, but I just think this is brilliant, and it stuck with me. And, you know, talk about a subject and then say, but does it grow corn? Meaning that, particularly among indigenous people in North America, you know, you're relying on your spiritual leaders Well, everywhere, in indigenous people everywhere, you're relying on your spiritual leaders for survival purposes, right? Okay. It's great that you can travel to all of these other realms, but in physical reality, Are you starving to death because you didn't grow corn or you weren't able to? hold down a job or you know, that sort of thing. And this is against this is sort of against the idea of using spirituality as an escape, there's a, there's a fine line between using spirituality as an escape and using it as part of a solution to a problem. So this is where this positive thinking can break things down, break down a little bit. Because if people are just ignoring reality, and not taking care of the things that they're supposed to take care of, not doing self care not doing, taking care of all of the various realms, we live in mind, body, and spirit. Um, you know that that's a problem, you are not just a spiritual being, your body is, is important, as long as you have one as well. I like to place importance on every part of you, your body is important, it is the vehicle that you're using in this reality, and someday you will shed that and not have this opportunity again, perhaps I mean, you'll, you know, if you do the reincarnation thing, you will be reborn into a different body, but you will never have this exact opportunity again. So take care of it. Take care of your body, take care of your physical needs, take care of your mental and emotional needs. And take care of your spiritual needs. You know, there's an expression from cars, firing on all cylinders, right? So if you know how, and you know, engines, gas engines work, they, you know, they have these cylinders, that have you know, that, that move up and down, and they, you know, essentially suck in gasoline, you know, as an aerosol. And then they compress it, and then the spark plugs fire. And that causes, you know, like little explosions inside your engine that keeps the pistons moving back and forth, right. And, you know, if you are, let's say you have a six cylinder car, and only three cylinders are working. You know, this might not be the exact math as to how that works. But, you know, you're only going to be working at 50% effectiveness. Maybe less than that, I don't know, I don't know the math for how engines work if but firing on all cylinders means that you're firing at full power that all of your cylinders are working, that your mind, your body, and your spirit are working together. When you get things into alignment. When you get that congruence, I think there's almost it makes, it makes the impossible possible. It makes things happen. This is where this is where magic happens. It's where magic is effective. And, you know, this is where the law of attraction comes into place.

So if you're just sitting on the couch, wishing really hard, that circumstances are going to change in your life, you may have some small influence on probability, but the act of sitting on the couch is probably going to have a greater influence on probability. Your inaction will have a greater influence on things and so you know, get into alignment get into congruence, magic will happen. Our consciousness does affect the universe, but so does everybody else's. Right, the 100 and 50 million other people playing Powerball each week, are also wishing real hard that they win. And, you know, part of the reason the jackpots gets so big is that there is not a winner every week. So I don't know if people are canceling out each other's wishes or that sort of thing. And that gets into, you know, the idea of ecological being ecological. If when I'm wishing for harms others or causes harms harm to me in some other way, you know, you know, I can give I won't give a personal example of that, but I can tell you that there was a period of time where something I wished for came true and it really kind of messed my life up for a while, because I didn't think of the repercussions of getting what it was that I wanted. And I paid for that for a long time. So you know, something to consider, be ecological because you just might be magic, you are magic. You can't help but influence the universe even on non physically you're doing it whether you were doing it unconsciously most of the time. So that being said, this is a little bit of a shorter podcast I hope this has been informative, giving you something to think about some, some tips if you practice manifestation. If you don't practice manifestation, you're manifesting anyway. You're just not practicing it. You're just not doing it consciously. So be conscious in your manifestation get into alignment, get into congruence, and things will happen for you. I know it I am an example of it and I wish you all the happiness in the world. I wish you good luck, I wish you to remain healthy and happy.

Announcer 46:24

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

Ep36 Spirituality and Magic

Announcer 0:27

Hello, and welcome to speaking spirit where we talk about all things spiritual. Your host, John Moore is a shamanic practitioner and spiritual teacher. And now here's John.

John Moore 0:43

Hello, hello, everybody.

It has been a very long time since I've done one of these. And it's not because I'm not thinking about you and love you and care about you and love talking to you, but the universe had plans, the universe still has plans. And I've been up to a lot of things that have, you know, precluded me from spending the time necessary to record a podcast episode. A few things of note. I have. So I've just completed the I had a deadline of writing a chapter of a book that will be coming out shortly and I will. When that happens, I will make an announcement about that. Um, I did three radio interviews this past week. One in the UK my first international radio broadcast I've done I've done podcasts of guested as a podcast guest in other countries. This is my first international radio of his appearance, the right word, do you appear on the radio? Whatever it is, it's my it was my first interview. And I have a regular radio spot that I do here in Maine in the good old US of A. And then I had a third interview, and I've got another one coming up this week. And I don't know people seem to like to talk to me. And that's, you know, I love it like because clearly I love talking on my podcast. I'm also doing I'm also doing a I'm guessing on another podcast this week. The other thing I have going on is that I released an app this week, and right now it is on Android, but it will be on iOS soon. That takes a little bit longer and is called shaman world and it has videos and has this podcast. You can listen to this podcast directly in the app and it has if you're into shamanism, you're into shamanic journeying, it has drum tracks, and it has articles and all kinds of stuff. And it's another way it's absolutely free. And it's another way that I spread my love for all things spiritual, and particularly in shamanism, specifically. So that being said this morning is well it is morning where I am and whatever time of day it is, we're where you are I greet you. But yesterday was Halloween, one of my favorite days of the year in the you know, birthplace of many of my ancestors previously known as sourin also known as all souls Eve today is the first of November day of the dead All Souls Day. There's a lot going on holiday wise. And I know that I have listeners from all over the world and I love that I love that there are people in all different countries and I don't know if you're familiar with the traditions as they are in the US. You know, there's a lot of a lot of movies and TV from the US that gets exported. So you might be aware that Halloween is a day where children in particular get dressed up and go around from door to door do we called trick or treating and people give them candy and my children were were definitely out last night they're probably getting to the age where that's not going to happen too many more. Too many more years, if at all, but they loved that they love that activity they love. It's not just about getting the candy. It's about dressing up and they you know the hang out with a go around with a large group of friends or not a large group of friends but obviously we're still in the middle of the pandemic. We keep the friends group, kind of small and insulated. But they they go with a group of friends and they they dress up and they coordinate their costumes. So there, I believe, will not I believe I know last night they all went as characters from the cartoon Scooby Doo, which was really funny. And one of my daughters was Daphne. Another one was Shaggy. And, you know, one of their friends is Fred, one of their friends with Scooby Doo. And, you know, if you're familiar with a cartoon, and it's interesting, because that cartoon was popular when I was very young. So, you know, it's kind of a kind of a fun thing.

So today, I realize I've been, you know, this is kind of a long, long lead in long intro, but I wanted to let you know what I was doing. Because it's been about three weeks since I've recorded one of these. And I usually do them about once a week, it has just been hectic, and in a good way, busy in a good way. I'm not one of those people who takes pride in simply the act of being busy. I feel like we put a lot of emphasis on being busy, and sometimes to the point where it can become unhealthy. But I've been busy for good reasons. And I'm excited about a number of the reasons that I have been been so busy. Also been busy with clients and students. Always excited about that. I love, love, love, love teaching. And so, yeah, anyway, what am I going to talk about today. Um, today, I'm going to talk about sort of two sides of a similar coin. I'm going to talk about spirituality. And I'm going to talk about the word magic, and how those two play together what they mean, I'm going to, you know, obviously, I always when I, when I talk about terms, I always give my definitions not that my definitions are better than anybody else's. They aren't you might have your own definitions, or you might look things up in a dictionary or what have you. But I want you to understand what I'm talking about. And I might use these words differently than you do. And so when I say something like, spiritual or spirituality, what the heck am I talking about? I do have a little bit of a different definition than most people for both of those words. I've been, you know, noodling on this for years. I've been thinking about it for a very long time. And I'm, you know, especially with the word spiritual and in spirituality, what is, you know, what's the meaning there? And then I'm going to talk about magic in a way. Well, not in a way in a bit. I'm going to talk about magic for sure. And I'm gonna talk about there's lots of definitions of magic. And when I'm, you know, just upfront, I'm not talking about stage magic. I'm not talking about Penn and Teller, or David Copperfield, stage magic or card tricks or, or anything like that. I'm not talking about prestidigitation. That's a big word. I'm not talking about that stuff. I'm talking about what we consider magic, like the stuff of wizards and sorcerers, and witches and all kinds of practitioners and how that definition really extends to a lot of human activity. And there's a lot of baggage around it, there's a lot of religious oppression of magical activities. So, so we're talking about both of those things. And when I talk about spirituality, I have a very what I hope is a very inclusive definition. Because what you know and you know, the name of this podcast is speaking spirit and I'm talking about spirit and I in you know, upfront I'm, you know, this is no surprise to anybody who's listened this podcast or knows anything about me. But I have my own set of beliefs and my own set of practices, I practice shamanism, and shamanism is both a set of practices and what we would call a constellation of beliefs. And from one shamanic practitioner to another. Those might be slightly different, but that's also true with anything. It's true with Catholicism. If I asked two Catholic people what X Y or Z meant to them, they might have very different answers or is Islam or Buddhism or what have you. And then there's all kinds of different flavors, right? There's different flavors of Christianity and even Catholicism.

I've been in other I've been in different countries, with Catholic churches and experienced very different things there. From, you know, there are commonalities, of course, major commonalities and, you know, doctrine and dogma and the way they believe, but there are also differences in different places and even different regions. Where I was living in Boston for a while. They did maths, in the church, near me. And in English, of course, but also in Portuguese, and Italian and maybe Spanish, I'm not sure. Is it a bunch of different languages to accommodate the different people there. And I know I have been to bilingual masses, where they were done in language is just one minor difference. But I've been to bilingual masses, where the, in Canada where the priest was chanting, chanting the mass, first of all, in English, and then French, or I think French first and then an English. And that was really interesting. And I'm not Catholic, and so I don't understand everything. But I've been to a few masses in my life. And so you know, there are with everything, there are differences. And so I don't speak for everybody who practices shamanism. And I don't, and I don't speak for I certainly don't speak for anybody else. But let's talk about spirituality, and what is spiritual? And I want to put forth a couple of thoughts about that. A couple of propositions, a couple of theories, hypotheses, ideas, what have you about that. And, you know, I would be remiss if I didn't mention the word belief. And I'll start with that, because it'll hopefully make everything else much easier. So a belief is something that we hold to be true. That's it, it's the entire that's my entire definition of belief, anything that you think is true. And there are lots of definitions of beliefs and beliefs, one I've seen that's that I like to is habits of thought, well, some habits of thought, don't fall into the category of belief, but is a habit of thought about what is true, something I perpetually think is true. This is regardless of whether or not the thing that you believe actually is true, empirically or otherwise. So I believe that I am sitting in a chair right now, because because it is my truth that I'm sitting in a chair. Whether or not that is actually true, and I quote unquote, know that. The truth, the truthiness, if you were the the, the subjective experience, that that is truth, to me, is a belief. And when we look at things that way, it opens us up to a great deal of flexibility in how we think about things. So in some traditions, particularly in chaos, magic, and I'll talk about magic a little bit later. Having a flexible belief system, meaning, having the ability to try on different beliefs and see how they work for you, is powerful. And I can tell you that is extremely powerful. Being able to, I'm going to act as if I think x is true. And that's not to say to do that in an unsafe manner. Because if I stood on top of a tall building and said, I'm going to pretend that I believe I can fly and jump off that building Well, you know, the results of that are most likely going to be catastrophic for me. So I don't think that that is a fantastic way of doing it. But what I'm talking about is let's say for example, I don't particularly believe in the practice of astrology.

What if I tried that on for a little while, what if I said, Okay, I'm going to act as if this is a True, I'm going to act as a, I'm going to shift my beliefs around and act as if that's true. Well, what we can find is that our beliefs really, seriously shape our experience of the world. And we can actually change significantly change our experience of the world, when we change our beliefs. And it does take a little practice. And I am going to do a whole entire podcast on belief and get into it from both a spiritual and a psychological perspective. And I'll talk about how we can experiment with and change our beliefs, because I think that is super, super powerful. So I look at people who cannot. Who cannot entertain the idea of different beliefs, right. So we're talking fundamentalists of all kinds. So good examples are religious fundamentalists who resort to violence, rather than allowing anybody to question their belief. And, and we can see, then, that very, you know, in, in a lot of ways, a very, very rigid belief systems that cannot be questioned, can be extremely unhealthy. So the reason I've gotten to belief a little bit is because my definition of spirituality might be in conflict with yours, and that's fine. I'm not saying you need to adopt my definition of spirituality. But what I'm saying is, if you experiment with, what if that were true? What if I did, like, even if you don't believe that and think I'll never believe that? Just try it as an experiment. Ask yourself what? Okay, what if I, if I don't believe that? What if I believe what if I did believe that was true? What if I believe the world was flat? That's not to say that I'm going to adopt the position that the world is flat, but how, like doing the thought experiment? You know, I would have to believe this, I would have to believe that this would change that would change, right? That, that allows us to become more flexible in our behavior more flexible in how we approach the world. And flexibility and adaptation is makes us more resilient, it makes us more, you know, in the in the in the scheme of evolution, when Darwin talked about the survival of the fittest, what he's really talking about is survival of the most flexible, the most adaptive, right? Because what is fittest it is what meets the situation most appropriately. So if I, you know, I live in the Northeast of the United States, it gets very cold here in the winter. And if I only owned wool clothes, and ski jackets, and then I traveled to the south, you know, the Southwest United States and hung out in the desert, that I would have a hard time surviving for very long, I would have to adapt, I'd have to adapt my clothing. So the same is kind of true with beliefs, like, you know, if you want to try out something, try out a different system of belief, you can, it doesn't mean you have to adopt it. So if I traveled to the southwest, I would put on lighter clothing. But then when they came back to where I lived, I would put my wool clothes and ski jacket on again, because it's you know, especially in the winter, it's very, very cold and snowy here. So, I have about belief and trying on different beliefs. Let's talk about spirituality and spirit, what do I mean by spiritual and what? How that how we can be more inclusive with that term. So my definition of spiritual what makes something spiritual is that it's anything that gives you a greater sense, or a or some sense anyway, of being connected to or a part of something greater than yourself.

This is a very generic, very flexible definition of spiritual and I'm going to give a bunch of examples because I think that'll be that'll illustrate it. Hopefully pretty well. Okay, so when I practice shamanism, I am in connection with spirits With the spirit world and with these worlds that are greater than myself, and ultimately I get in touch with my divine spark, which is my connection to divinity, to everything that there is, and that everything is ultimately connected to everything that there is. So that's very spiritual. And you know, there are there are spirits and their spiritual realms in shamanism, so I can talk about that. But it's the sense of connection, it's this inner knowing this feeling, it's emotional, it is connected. And that definition leaves room for a whole lot of activity. Yes, if you go pray at a church or a mosque or a temple, you will get a sense of connection to something greater to God or to Buddha or to Jesus or to Muhammad or what have you, saints and angels or gods and goddesses or what have you, right, something greater than yourself, the greater thing the you know, in Sanskrit, Brahman, the over soul. But what about people who don't have a spiritual? What we would consider a spiritual practice or maybe agnostic or even atheistic? What about those people? And can they experience something spiritual? Is it possible for them to experience something greater than themselves? And to experience that connection? And my answer that is absolutely. Because I can feel really connected to nature and have a spiritual experience with that, I can feel that I am part of that I can, I can, you know, go out and be in awe of a sunset. Or I can feel it feel, you know, go to the go to the beach and watch the surf and get absorbed into that experience. And that I would argue, is a spiritual experience, whether or not there is deity involved, or non physical entities. See, spiritual doesn't have to necessarily mean entities like deities, or, you know, ghosts or what have you item? I don't think it it certainly can. But it doesn't, in my opinion, it doesn't have to. And the reason for that is human beings seem to be hardwired for spiritual experiences, spiritual beliefs. And, you know, for all of recorded human history, and well beyond that, we have shamanistic behavior, spiritual behavior, we have people using psychoactive plants and mushrooms and frogs even to alter their, you know, to alter their experience and to get absorbed to become you know, to have an Theo genic experiences, which is, you know, experiences of divinity, I guess. But some people don't believe in divinity and, you know, that's okay. That's okay. I would, you know, I would say that if you hold a really tight belief about anything about the lack of divinity, or the existence of divinity, or whatever, um, you know, trying on the beliefs of the other side, you know, and having a subjective experience of what they might experience can help us as human beings communicate with one another better. And I beg your pardon, but I'm gonna have a little sip of coffee this morning. It's, it's very early. I usually drink coffee while I am. While I record these podcasts. I'm a coffee fan. And right now it's, it's super early, and it's it's actually pretty dark outside right now. That's what happens in the fall in Maine, it gets darker and darker until the winter gets, you know, the sun, this time of this time of day in the summer, the sun would be up already, but it's pretty pretty dark outside at the moment and coffee helps me adjust coffee as a tool for higher consciousness. Anyway, so, what you know so, what are what are the things can be spiritual, then what, who, who has a spiritual experience? So,

you know, something, an idea that I want to put forth and you can you can try on and accept or reject is that the deeper you go into almost anything, the more spiritual it becomes. And so people who are have a pursuit or An example of that, and but by pursuit I mean people who are really incredible at one thing, so like world class musician, not saying necessarily, you know, pop stars, people who are make a ton of money playing music, but somebody who has dedicated their entire life to playing the piano, for example, or, or, you know, sport, for example, somebody who is at the very top of their game, if you are, you know, if you are lucky enough to watch them, you can see that they're absorbed into the experience that they're deep, deep, deep into the experience, there's something beyond the technical skill there. And when they're performing at their peak, they're in flow, and they're having what I can only describe as a spiritual experience. Give you a couple examples of that. Um, you know, years ago, I went to see a, I mean, many years ago, I went to see this concert pianist play, classical, classical piano solo concert. And you know, this person was absolutely brilliant, absolutely amazing. And I do have, I do have a musical background, I come from a musical family. My mom is a multi instrument, musician. My dad played music my, my brother plays guitar. And I played music and wrote music and did all kinds of, I did all kinds of stuff with music still kind of do. And so I know a little bit and I appreciate music, and I love I love many, many forms of music. In fact, I use I play music on Spotify. And last year, Spotify sent me this report, they said, you listen to 325 genres of music last year, and I was a little blown away. I do have very eclectic tastes in music, but I didn't realize it was 325 genres of music, different types of music, so I listened to music a lot. And I listened to different kinds, everything from folk music, from different countries, to popular music, to classical music to anything you can think of. If it's musical I like, I like it. I like listening to it. But anyway, so I went to see this concert pianist play at It was at this college near where I grew up called Bates College, which is in a town called Lewiston, Maine. And they have this beautiful art center with a lovely stage with great acoustics and a watch this man playing piano, and I don't remember exactly what he was playing, whether it was Rachmaninoff, or something else, but it was just, you know, some incredible piece of classical music. And I watched him very closely. I was sitting, you know, he was kind of in the center of the stage. And I was I was kind of in the center, I could see his hands and I get also see his face from the side. And, you know, as he played, first of all, he was not reading music, the piece that he was playing, which is incredibly complex, was memorized. You know, and lots of solo musicians do that, but it's still pretty incredible. To me, I certainly couldn't have done that. But about halfway into the concert, I noticed he was playing with his eyes closed. So he was not even looking at the keys and he just knew where they were. And you could tell from the expression on his face, that he was having this just experience of pure beauty and love for the music that he was playing. And he was just completely absorbed into the experience. It's like the audience didn't exist. And it's like the music was almost playing through him. That's to me in a spiritual experience.

Whether or not days he was involved, or he was channeling or what have you, but he was connected to the world in a way where it fell away a little bit. And he was connected to the music. And you know, that is that is a beautiful experience. It was a beautiful experience to watch and listen to live music is amazing. I you know, I listen, I do, obviously listen to a lot of recorded music, but I like to support live music. Because the it is, music is not just a sound experience, right? You know there is the sense of being in the, in the audience there's you know, there's the seeing the musician perform is very different. And hearing live music is different than recorded. Most recorded music these days, particularly popular music is edited like crazy, they do hundreds of takes and cut together the best pieces and process everything through electronics to make what they think is the best sound. But it is it's artificially sterile a little bit when you listen to it, you know, having everything perfect, and I realized they add things, they add things in when they do electronic processing to fudge with the music a little bit because perfect music actually doesn't actually sounds a little weird to human beings, because we're used to humans who aren't metronomes, or our computers generating absolute precision and our music. So now they've written stuff with, you know, electronic music to add to add swing to add little, you know, delays and holds in there to make it seem more random. says an interesting thing. Let me tell you give you another example. So I was having this conversation with my girlfriend recently, we're talking about this very topic. And she was telling me that, you know, and I use the, I use the example of Michael Jordan, who's probably, at least at one point, the world's most famous basketball player. And, you know, even if you don't follow American basketball, you might know who Michael Jordan is, because, you know, Nike sells Air Jordans, which are named after him. And, you know, he's been in movies and TV commercials all over the world and all kinds of stuff, right, he was the biggest basketball star in the world when he was playing. And watching him play was kind of an otherworldly experience, even if you don't like basketball. Because again, you know, he was he was the best in the world and having what I think was a spiritual experience where the game was almost being played through him rather than him playing the game rather than him efforting at the game, he was in flow when he played his best. And my girlfriend said to me, she goes, I don't even like basketball, but I would watch Michael Jordan play when he played with the Chicago Bulls. And we don't, you know, we live in New England, like we, the the Boston Celtics are the team that everybody follows here. And, you know, so he's not even playing for the team that everybody falls here, but people would watch him. So talk about being connected to something greater, you know, when millions of people who aren't even supposed to be fans of your team are tuning in to experience second hand what you're doing. I think that's a spiritual experience. It is a connection to something greater, he was connected to everybody watching him and he was connected to the game and his teammates and the other players and the whole world became connected to the whole world. So spiritual activity can be just about anything. A be somebody who's painting could be somebody who's an amazing chef, I was watching a documentary about you know, about this particular chef, and he was talking about how cooking for him was about a moment, a moment in a time when what he was cooking was perfect. And a second before that it was under done in a second after that. It was it was overdone, and he was just really absorbed into what he was doing. I think that's a spiritual experience.

Um, you know, it carries with it, it carries with it passion, it carries with it being in state of flow. Time, your perception of time seems to change. You know, and I've had these experiences in training martial arts and doing music and doing other things when I was a kid, these flow states, these flow states are definitely spiritual. So I would include anything like that. You know, and like I said, the deeper You get really get into anything the more spiritual becomes so you know, I could go out and play basketball poorly. But I probably won't have a spiritual experience from that because it's like, I'm not going to have a very deep experience of that, could I? Absolutely sure. Even if I'm not good at basketball, I could no dedicate myself to it and go really deeply into my experience of it and that sort of thing. So you can go very deep into almost anything and that includes yourself. And that is an can be an important part of spirituality going deep into yourself and doing your work. In shamanism, this is critical. Because shamanism, when you if you practice it in any serious way is going to shake your life to the very foundations. It's just the way it works. If you're, if you don't come into shamanism, from your life already being shaken up severely, some people come into shamanism as the result of what's called shamanic crisis, which is like a health crisis or a mental health crisis, that sort of thing. But even then, it's going to shake you up and tell you that you need to do your own work, which includes like Shadow Work, and healing work and all kinds of stuff. There's stuff there. You know, and I have a lot of people come to me that say, I want to learn shamanism, and that's cool. You know, you can, you can, you know, it is something these days, you can dabble a little bit into, you can take a weekend, introduction class and read books and learn how to journey relatively quickly, actually, you know, myself and some of my colleagues have been working on different ways to teach people to do shamanic journeying. And the way that I teach it now, you know, has changed since when I started teaching, and I have found a way, I've found ways and there could certainly be better ways of teaching it. But I found a way that has the highest rate of initial success, meaning most people, you know, before, it would take a lot of tries sometimes before most people were successful. And, you know, I experimented with the way I teach it, and the way you know, the, the order in which people do things and that sort of thing. And I've got a method of teaching now that nearly everyone is successful the first time. So, you know, people can dabble in this stuff and learn it a little bit. But if you want to do it to a degree of depth, you want to say become a practitioner, or this is going to become your sole spiritual path. You know, hold on to your hat, your life's gonna get shaken up a bit. It's just the way it happens. You know, it's the way that spirit reconfigures you, gets you ready to be able to do the work, that sort of thing. So, yeah, I mean, you can you can do spiritual activities without going way too deep. But you know, but going very deeply, you're going to go into yourself, you're gonna go deeply into yourself. And that can be a spiritual experience. Even if you do that through psychoanalysis, for example, you know, particularly like Jung in psychoanalysis, I won't talk about Freud. Like, I think that's kind of gone by the wayside at this point, but he was a pioneer, but his ideas had a place in time, where, you know, Jung came along and you know, sort of talking about archetypes and actually, you know, studied shamanism and had shamanic experiences and really, like his stuff became really spiritual. Likewise, a lot of physicists, particularly people who were doing some initial work in the area of quantum physics and stuff became ultimately became very spiritual when they started looking at the way the universe works.

You know, quantum entanglement, you know, two particles that are not touching and can be separated by I guess, any distance. When you observe one the other one changes. You know, could be light years away could be, you know, whatever. How does that work? Well, you know, Einstein called that spooky spooky action at a distance sounds sort of spiritual, doesn't it? Spooky we think of ghosts and spirits and that sort of thing. All that stuff's hard to get your brain around, like the fact that observing things changes how they behave, but we can we can prove that empirically, scientifically, experimentally. The very act of being conscious of something by observing something observing it changes it at a fundamental level of physics. If that isn't spirits are spiritual, I don't know what it is. So that's, you know, that's spiritual spirituality, kind of my definition. And you know, where we're going in this is sort of important leading into the next topic. And I said, I was going to talk about spirituality, and magic. And again, not stage magic, not pulling rabbits out of a hat or card tricks, or, you know, coin tricks or rope tricks or what have you. Although, I love a, I'll be honest with you, I love stage magic. I love to be fooled by that stuff. I did stage magic. When I was a young kid, I did a show, I did a talent show, I did a magic act. And I was always learning tricks. And I was fascinated by that stuff. And I still am to this day, and I will you know, very often watch magicians on TV or YouTube or what have you. And even when it is hard to fool me because I you know, understand how the mechanics behind some of the tricks it's still impressive because I particularly like sleight of hand. Because sleight of hand. As opposed to this, you know, ginormous stage magic that relies on, you know, props and assistants, and smoke and mirrors and stuff. Sleight of Hand requires skill and endless hours of practice. When you see a magician, you know, make a coin disappear, for example, that might represent years of practice. And you know, the the effect might be super simple. And you might have seen it 1000 times. But it is, you know, having some understanding of the mechanics of sleight of hand makes you actually appreciate that even more. I remember one day, you know, we're, you know, years and years ago, I was living in Boston, there was a guy there was a street magician who used to work downtown, he used to put on a little show and pass a hat and try to collect money and stuff. And he was I remember he was at least his act he came off is very angry. For some reason. It was strange, strange act. And I remember walking up behind him one day when he was doing his show. I didn't intentionally walk behind him. I was just, you know, I was walking up the street where he was performing, and I wound up behind him. And I saw what he was doing. I saw him do stuff behind his back. Now I had seen his act several times before because I had stopped and watched him. And I could see him he did tricks with you know, cups and balls in a cigarette in his hat and all these things. And it was all sleight of hand. And it was just incredible. And it was incredible. Watching him do what he was doing, watching how he did the trick was absolutely incredible. Because the dexterity required, the amount of practice the years of practice he must have put in was incredible. And he noticed me standing behind him. And he turned around and in his angry way said something along the lines of I don't care if you can see what I'm doing. Because you can't do it. He was absolutely right. Even if I knew 100% of everything he did. It would take me years to get to the level of skill that he was at. And the thing is, so people watching him from the front would see him you know,

make a cigarette disappear and then reappear in his mouth or whatever. And he Oh yeah, you know, that's a cool trick. But I'm watching him, you know, skillfully move it from hand to hand behind his back in a way that nobody notices and palming it and you know, flicking it between fingers without looking at his hands and just using his sense of touch index state and knowledge of where things is at. I think that was a spiritual experience, certainly was observing it. But I want to talk about magic Hocus Pocus, witchcraft and sorcery and wizardry and Harry Potter stuff, but in real life. And, you know, there are many definitions of magic. One of the most famous ones is from Alistair Crowley, who was an infamous magician considered himself a black magician, and he had a lot of a lot of bad press, and most of that was his own doing was an incredible egomaniac. And he was, by all accounts, not a very nice person, very abusive to a lot of people around him. That being said, he really revolutionized our understanding of a lot of things. He wrote seminal works in things that are referenced in many areas today. And without him, you know, there's a lot of a lot of things that wouldn't you know, people practicing different occult sciences and types of magic and stuff like that might not be because he popularized a lot of stuff. It was one of those things where he was like, always saying crazy stuff in being written about in newspapers. And, you know, he called himself the beasts. And so it was, like, shocking to, you know, the Christians in his, you know, his, in the, his own country of the UK and in the United States. And he was around during World War Two. And there is a there's a really interesting series about Jack Parsons, who founded a jet propulsion laboratories that is still the people who build rockets for NASA. And he got heavily involved into Salima, which is the system of ceremonial magic. And the order that Alistair Crowley founded and he was a, a direct student of Crowley, I think the I don't know how truthful, the, you know, it's a TV show. So they have fictionalized, some of it. But it is really based on real people and many real events and that sort of thing. And Alistair Crowley was definitely involved in intelligence work, which is interesting, because you know, if you know who John D is, he was the sort of the court astrologer for Queen Elizabeth the first and a magician, and wrote volumes and volumes of stuff. But he was also involved in intelligence work, and many other things is an advisor to Queen Elizabeth and just a, you know, brilliant renaissance man. And I've read a few books about him. And he's just extremely interesting, and many times in trouble with the law, because practicing anything that was considered a cult or magic or whatever, was risky. You're taking your life in your hands, back in those days, you know, they'd still burn you for being a witch or hang you for being a witch. That was well before the witch trials in the US where they hung, you know, I think 22 People 20 some odd people but jailed over 200 But obviously, in Europe, they, you know, killed maybe in the millions who knows, it's not an accurate record, but lots and lots of people during that time. So anyway, Crowley had a definition of magic, which is, you know, causing change in accordance with will write causing change in the world, according to your will, so I will something into existence or I will certain circumstances to happen and I can cause some change.

And that, you know, that's a that's a good and workable definition. Um, but I do think that may be a little overly inclusive, right. So if I ask somebody to pass the salt across the table, and they do is that magic? Because I have caused change in accordance with Will I have encountered please pass the salt and the person pass the salt? You know, maybe maybe you consider that magic, and that's fine. But that sort of ordinary to me. You know, and then you shamanic realms we, you know, we kind of differentiate between ordinary reality and non ordinary reality. There's certainly, you know, there's certainly no agreement about the definition of magic amongst magicians, magical orders, that sort of thing. But for me, it kind of boils down to the word influence. And it is, you know, the use of non physical, non ordinary means, to influence reality. And that is, you know, that is still a fairly loose definition. Right, and so I'm talking about non physical. So, even though there may be physical components to working magic, I might be using burning a candle, and citing incantations, are all physical things, what's happening underneath that is some non physical stuff. So I might be using physical action as a means to get some non physical change. And I really like the word influencing reality rather than changing reality. Because, you know, you know, when I was, you know, when I was a kid, I would have loved to be able to, like, wave a wand and have an ice cream, you know, bowl of ice cream appear in front of me. And I would consider that magic, making something appear out of thin air. And, though I have witnessed things along those lines, in my life, someday, I'll describe some of the things that I have witnessed firsthand. And I promise I was not doing drugs while I witnessed them. And, you know, you may or may not believe them, I wasn't the only person there who witnessed them. But I've seen some things, my friends that would convince anybody that this stuff is real. So anyway, most of the time, that's not how magic works. Most of the time, we are influencing things, and, and the easiest thing to influence our circumstances and events, right. And this is where the law of attraction falls down. For a lot of people, manifestation falls down for a lot of people. Because there's this idea that if I sit around and wish real hard, a box of money is going to fall out of the sky and land in my lap. And in a in an infinite and expanding universe, that is certainly possible. But that is not probable. And so I like to look at magical activity, which again, is using using non physical non ordinary means to influence reality.

You know, I like to, I like to look at that in different in a different way. And I like to look at it as influencing probabilities. And so, you know, there, there are easier things to do and magic and harder things to do in magic. And so easier things are things that have a higher probability of already happening. Because you don't have to affect as much stuff. So, you know, an example of that is, you know, using using magic to help you change somebody's mind about something, or to bring about a set of circumstance, a set of open ended circumstances. So I'll give you even an example here, okay. So I want to use magic or the law of attraction or wishing or praying and praying is a form of magic that might be offensive to you if you are Christian or what have you, but you are using spiritual means to try to influence reality. That's magic in a very pure form. So whatever means whatever means you're doing you're you're trying to, you know, you're you're trying to cause things to happen. And one of the ways that law of attraction manifestation stuff falls down for people is they try to control too much of the manifestation. So let's say that I want to do some work, I want to pray or I want to cast a spell or I want to, you know, do something To manifest some money, right? Say I need $1,000 for something, and I want to use magical methods to attract that or manifest or what have you. Um, you know, and that might be well, within the realm of reality in my, in my given circumstances, I might know people who could potentially lend me $1,000. Or I might be able to get a raise at work or what have you. And so there's, there's a high probability of that happening. And that's a very easy thing to do. Where it gets hard is where I try to outguess the universe, and manifest very specific things in very specific ways. Like, on Tuesday, at 3pm, I will walk out to my mailbox and open it up and inside will be a brown envelope with $1,000 in cash from an unknown source. Is there a possibility that that could happen that that could manifest? Sure, anything's possible? Is it probable that that's going to happen to me? Unlikely, that's not something that has ever happened to me in my life, it's not something that ever happens to most people. Could I use magical means prayer, whatever, to influence those exact circumstances? Yeah, that's gonna be pretty hard, though. And it might not be successful. And if it is, um, if it's not successful, I might get discouraged. And I might believe that none of this stuff works. If however, and, and trust me, I have done this, I say I am going to, you know, I need to manifest at least $1,000 in some way. In the near future, I'm being less precise about this. And this allows the universe to work with probabilities and find the most probabilistic way of, of creating that circumstance, it's far easier to influence that circumstance to come in. Because that $1,000 could come to me in different ways. So I did a ritual, you know, a while ago, and the ritual was, was an experiment I didn't, I wasn't lacking in any way. But it was part of some educational program I was in where they're like, Okay, do this, you know, do this ritual, and you will have an unexpected amount of, you know, financial abundance come to you in at these periods of time, and don't try to control how they're coming to you. So I was like, okay, you know, I'm down with that, to see how this works. And so I did the ritual, and I kind of forgot about it. And then within a very short period of time, a relative sent me an unexpected and quite large sum of money. And older relative basically saying, I'm trying to,

you know, I'm trying to basically give away, you know, she's getting up there in age, I'm trying to give away stuff to people, my relatives will be inheriting stuff to me before I pass away. So it doesn't have to go through probate or people fighting over it and contesting the will and all this stuff, XYZ. And she talked to her lawyer and a lawyer, he said, This is a great idea. And so out of the blue, right after this. This large amount of you know, large ish, not huge, I'm not independently wealthy, came to me from that completely unexpected, unknown. It didn't cause any bad circumstances for anybody. It was nothing but a gift of love and joy, and no legal repercussions could have been cleared through a lawyer and didn't have to rob a bank, any of those things. And, you know, I didn't, I wouldn't, couldn't have possibly, excuse me, guess if these exact circumstances or made these exact circumstances happen. But because I did this ritual, and as an experiment, and I was open to whatever happened and how it happened, and I didn't try to control it. It happened and I've had things like this very frequently, frequently in my life. So I, you know, at one point, I in my life, I decided I wanted to become a published author. I'm like, How's you know, how am I gonna do that? I'm going to self publish, I'm going to write a book proposal. I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do that. And I was working in technology, but I was still studying spiritual things. And, you know, what have you and I did some work around becoming a published author. and out of the blue, a, an acquisitions editor for a technical publishing company got in touch with me. And I didn't think that I was going to write a technical book. This was the other thing, I thought, Oh, I'm going to write something about martial arts, or I'm going to write something about spirituality. But I just did this work to become a published author. And acquisitions editor contacted me out of the blue found my LinkedIn profile or something, and got in touch with me and said, we're looking for somebody with your expertise to write this exact book, will you pitch this to us? Long story short, you know, seven or eight years ago, I wrote it, I wrote a technology book and got it published. And, you know, that, that came true. And that has happened over and over again, in my life. Um, and so, you know, the, the example I like to you, but I was open to how that was going to happen. And that made things much easier for the work to work, so to speak. Like I, you know, I definitely, you know, I was, it was open ended, and I was willing to accept the way that it came to me and, and I was surprised. And that pretty much always happens when something like this occurs, I'm always surprised at how it comes to me. Again, this is where the law of attraction falls down a little bit. I think people try to control stuff or be really exact about stuff, or they do things out of desperation. Or, you know, they give up too soon. As to this stuff doesn't work. It really does. It really does all work. So, you know, an example I'd like to give before I before I wrap this up, because I'm at about an hour now is, you know, most people think well if you know if you can influence reality, and you can you can cast a spell or do some work or do law of attraction work? Why can't you just win the lottery. So again, remember, I said that magic is about influence and about influencing probability. So if you look at a big lottery, so in the in the US, we have a lot of states, we have this thing called Powerball. And they've had, you know, half a billion dollar jackpots, I can't even imagine that amount of money, that people have won huge amounts of money Big Lottery. Well, the odds the probability of winning that, you know, by guessing the correct numbers that are being drawn, or if you are trying to influence the numbers that are being drawn, or something like one in 300 million. So imagine trying to influence something that has a probability of one in 300 million.

So that would be a little bit like me saying, I'm going to I don't I skate? I'm going to use magic, and I'm going to become an Olympic ice skater. Is that probable? Where the what's the probability of that? Pretty much nothing, right. So trying to influence and on top of that, you've got, you know, 300 million people trying to win the same thing, trying to create the same effects for themselves, undoing the work that you're doing. That's really, really hard to do in magic. Now, luck is a thing. And luck is an energy and luck is a real thing in many systems. And from hoodoo, to Norse magic, to all kinds of stuff. Luck is a force, it's a power. And again, luck is about influencing probability in your favor, having things come up your way. But it's not going to you know, if you jump off a building, make a marshmallow a, you know, a 17 foot tall marshmallow peeler appear under you, so you're totally fine. That I'm sorry to say that's not how it works, at least not in my experience, or is very, very difficult to do that. There's lots of ways that magic can work. I'll do a whole episode on probably on magic at some point in the future, but I just wanted to really talk about spirituality and Magic in the same podcast so that because they go hand in hand. And remember I said, you know, magic is using non physical, non ordinary means to influence influence reality. So there are lots of things that are magic that people don't think are so prayer is a big one. Prayer is huge if you ever pray for anything, and that includes praying to go to heaven. When you die, or praying to heal yourself when you're sick or, or somebody else are praying for world peace, you're trying to influence reality. Um, you know, in many places in the world, when somebody has a birthday, we put candles on their cake and light them and people make a wish and blow them out. Well, that's an act of magic, right? Making a wish and blowing out candles, that's candle magic. You know, and people don't think about it that way. People who are like, oh, you know, magic is, is the work of the devil, they'll still blow up candles on their birthday cake. Which is, you know, I'll get into the whole another, another podcast too. It's all pretty silly. So I want to wrap it up here. But I hope this has been helpful. And I would encourage you to play with beliefs a little bit. You know, and just do thought experiments around them. What what would it be like if I believed this? What would it be like if I believed this, you don't have to adopt anything, you don't have to take on anything permanently. And the more flexible you can be, the better in my opinion.

And I realize it's a subjective term, but you're gonna have an easier time with reality if you can be a little more flexible in your belief system.

With that, I'll sign off I hope you're happy and healthy. I love you all. And I will talk to you again really soon.

Announcer 1:07:38

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 maineshmam.com

Ep35 Death and Immortality

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 0:45

hello everybody I wish you a good morning or whatever time of day it is when you listen to this it is the morning where I am it is as I am talking to you kind of in the beat we're in the beginning of October which is a month that I enjoy a lot I where I live in the northeastern part of the United States this is you know we entered fall in autumn or fall in September. But really this is when the leaves change colors it's amazingly beautiful here and the leaves fall off the trees and the trees are bear until spring eventually usually not till later in October but the end of October is Halloween is otherwise known as Samhain we get into all souls Eve Day of the Dead all those kinds of things. Some people know this as Season of the Witch it's a transition time right as all seasons are but here it is especially true we experience significant changes in the environment changes in temperature you know it's not unheard of to have snow here but before the end of the month. Depending on where you live that might be shocking. But I remember a few years back when my children were small and you know if you're not in the US you might not practice this but you probably are aware that we do something called trick or treating with children which is on Halloween night kids dress up and go from house to house and people give them candy. And gosh that is a favorite day of so many kids as you might imagine getting a bag full of candy once a year from strangers I know it sounds might sound weird if you're not used to that tradition but it certainly was my I think one of my favorite one of my favorite holidays growing up as a child and certainly was for my kids but I remember going out one year and there was snow on the ground and the kids had to wear boots and coats over their costumes which is kind of a bummer you want people to see your costumes but the dressing up part is really cool. And of course this you know this goes back a long long time to Celtic traditions having to do with selling and you know lighting jacker lanterns to scare off evil spirits and dressing up as ghosts and goblins and going from house to house. And you know there were other other traditions including a meal to honor the your ancestors to honor the dead because it was thought and I believe this to be true that this is a time where the veil between the worlds is thinner the ancestors and spirits are able to come back and visit more readily make their presence known. And you're able to interact with them more easily. And I think this is something I have experienced and it's something that exists in many cultures. You know, the Mexican Day of the Dead tradition is is in my opinion a beautiful one. And you know recognizes this as well. If you have not, if you have not seen the Disney movie, Coco it is it's one of my favorites. It's a Pixar animated movie that is about the Mexican Mexican Day of the Dead and it is whatever your feeling about mass media is it is a beautiful Full film, full of heart and full of love and respect for ancestors, and it's funny, and it's entertaining. And anyway, it's a good, it's a good thing. So, today's topic, I'm going to talk about death today because we're entering, you know, we're entering that season, and I'm going to talk about death and the dead and what happens and the cyclical nature of things. changes and seasons remind us of the cycles of,

you know, the cycles of nature, and we're a part of that where no, so many times people think he, as human beings, we consider ourselves separate from nature. And that is not a that is not reality, we are a part of nature, yes, we have removed ourselves in many ways. Most of us live inside buildings, and work and drive cars, and use plastic things and, you know, participate in things that are not what someone might consider natural. But we are organic, our bodies are organic, excuse me. Again, if you've never listened to this, I don't really edit this. So if I have a little if I have a little cough or clear my throat or whatever, I don't edit it out. I'm you know, I don't want people to think that I'm not a human being and make errors in my podcast or whatever, what have you so excuse me, if that comes up, I don't like to. I also like this to have a flow and don't interrupt my train of thought as I'm talking about stuff. So we're a part of nature and we experience cycles. And this can be seen in a lot of ways. A lot of people when the weather gets colder, tend to nest hibernate, rest more we eat differently. Not always, I mean nowadays, with the way we import food and that sort of thing, we can eat a lot of offseason food. But I you know, I for 1am a fan of eating seasonally, as much as I can. You know, that being said, I will enjoy a banana or an orange which are non native Here are a few things that are shipped in but this time of year where I live, it's Apple harvesting season and its pumpkin harvesting season. And there are a lot of root vegetables around so we you know, I love that stuff, this time of year, stews and things that warm me up and you know, it helps me helps my body anyway, be more in tune with the cycles that we're going through. So, as parts of nature, we are affected by the cycles of nature, the cycles of life, obviously, you know, we are born into a body we go through childhood, adolescence, puberty, we, you know, become adults, we hopefully live into old age and become elders and you know, eventually, our bodies die. And I'm going to say it that way our bodies die because I do believe in an afterlife. I have witnessed enough in my career as a shamanic practitioner, and I'll talk about that I'll talk about the demonic view or a shamanic view. I can't speak for every shamanic practitioner in the world, but I will speak from my perspective, having practiced shamanism for many years now. What the experience of death is like from that perspective, my hope is that I can demystify it a lot, because a lot of people are afraid of death. At least in the Western world here. We're so you know, in the US, especially, we're so removed from death in the dying process. You know, there's a whole funeral industry here where, you know, when somebody dies, the body is quickly removed and taken and cleaned up, and then you might see it for a visitation, and then it's quickly buried. And that's it. And you go through the grieving process. And it costs 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of dollars. You know, and I think having witnessed some other cultural traditions, around what happens when people die, I'm You know, I feel like that's a little disconnected. And we're a little disconnected from death. And it makes us It makes us more fearful of death because there's this unknown part of death, we don't know what's going to happen. The other aspect is, you know, you've grown up in

Christian society, you know, you whether or not you practice Christianity, you most likely have some sort of reservation or fear of hellfire. Right? eternal torture. I'm gonna say right off the bat that, you know, and I, and I don't normally like to conflict with people's belief systems, you are welcomed to believe as you wish, and I will respect that. However, I will say that this concept of Hell is, you know, and pardon my French is bullshit. And it was invented to control people. And I and, you know, I understand why, you know, historically, when the, you know, when religion in the government was the same thing, and we didn't really have police forces, and ways to control people's behavior in society, we had to make people afraid of what would happen to them in the afterlife, because there wasn't necessarily punishment for crimes or, you know, what was considered blasphemy or, you know, any other offenses. And that's very plain, if you read that in any of the, the Abrahamic religions, right? There are lots of things, you know, for example, lots of dietary prescriptions, right, they wanted to keep people from getting sick, don't eat pork, and shellfish, because there was no refrigeration or testing of, you know, testing of food or anything like that. So those things were, could make people really ill. And, you know, there are a lot of things you know, that didn't necessarily that made a lot of sense, you know, five or 6000 years ago or 2000 years ago, and you know, what have you I and again, if you're a person who keeps kosher or or halaal or you know, what, what have you I'm totally fine, you know, that I'm not arguing against that, you know, it's part of your faith and I don't I don't hold that against anybody or say that's wrong or anything like that. I'm just saying the concept of hell was meant to keep people in line. And in my experience with death, and I'll describe what that's like in a bit. That just isn't it isn't a thing. Except for there there's there is a little bit of an exception to that. And and I'll talk about that as well. And and so of course, the Christian you know, concept of hell is that it's down below it's the underworld, it's even the word hell. Right. So what they what happened was, you know, when Christianity came into areas that were predominantly pagan, the turned pagan gods, they turned pagan beliefs. As I said, this, a giant Hawk just flew through my yard. Very interesting. They turned pagan beliefs in the afterlife, in the underworld, into things that were demonic of the devil. If you think about the devil as being horned and having cloven hooves and you think about the god Pan, you know from Greek paganism. That is, they are identical. They took these gods and turn them into demons or they turn them into saints or you know, whatever, they co opted them. They co opted holidays. You know, they put Christmas to meet Christmas in end of December to eclipse Saturnalia and other pagan holidays around you know, around the winter solstice. You know, when most likely that wasn't close to the date If you believe the story of the birth of Jesus, you know it was probably in the springtime sometime because of the way it's described of the shepherds out in the field sleeping out in the fields with their flocks anyway I'm not a biblical scholar, but

it is what it is. And you know, the word hell comes from, you know, comes from Norse belief actually and you know, hell was the underworld where most people go when they die if you weren't killed in battle and went to Valhalla, or you know, you didn't go with Freya to her Hall. I don't remember the name of that at this point. But if you didn't go to one of those places, because you didn't die in battle, you went to hell. And hell was not eternal torture, it was sort of this consider this place that was like fall It was like eternal autumn You know, it was not eternal torture. You know, that kind of thing. And of course, the Greeks believed in in an underworld, right. And the Romans and all of these pagan and they believe that's where you went when when you died. And in shamanism, we go to the lower world and we go to the upper world and they aren't really heaven or hell. So as far as the concepts around this, you know, and culturally This is totally reinforced, you know, we have even the TV show that I enjoy Lucifer about the Devil You Know, and I'll maybe I'll do a podcast about the devil at some point. And the, the, you know, the, the changing ideas about who the devil is and what the devil is and demons and all of that sort of thing, even though we're demon, right? Even the word demon is it comes from the Greek and it just means spirit. And in Greek, there were helpful spirits and harmful spirits and spirits of the house and they were all demons. But when Christianity came in and took over demons became denizens of hell and you know, the doers of the work of Satan. So gosh, you can't have these household spirits anymore. That's devil worship. Everything became devil worship. Um, so you know, I I don't like to, you know, I don't like to quibble too much over personal beliefs. And again, I try my best to respect everybody's personal beliefs. But this is, you know, this is this is what happened. You can't there is no denying that this is what what happened. This is empirically, historically true. So, anyway, the concept of hell meant to control people not really a thing. So, as you probably know, I'm a shamanic practitioner, I practice shamanism. I do not say the phrase, I am a shaman that is not in my tradition, one does not call oneself a shaman. So I use the term shamanic practitioner because it describes what I do I practice shamanism. And I do so for myself and for clients. It is healing work that I do and other types of work that I do for clients, but it's also on my spiritual path. And in shamanism, there is the concept of psychopomp. Right? psycho pump is again, it's a Greek term. And it means basically, spirit guide, a guide of spirits, and it holds the connotation of a person who or spirit a person who guides spirits after death. Right? It's not just like a spirit guide, like, you talk to a spirit and they give you guidance. This is specifically like, you know, we the pump part of psychopomp is where we get like pomp and circumstance, it's like, believe it means like, tour, someone who gives, you know, like a tour guide, right? And psycho, where we get the words psychology and psychiatry and all of those things meaning mind actually is a Greek word for spirit. It's a Greek word for spirit, right?

There's more than one. And I'll get into that a little bit too, because there are, you know, you might think of our as your of your spirit as one thing. But it is, it can be divided up into numerous things. You can think of a human being as a whole system of systems which includes mind, body and many spiritual components. But we are made up of very complicated parts, right? Think about our nervous system and our circulatory system just on the body level. And if you think about the mind level, you have your conscious mind and your unconscious mind and you have habits and beliefs and values, all of these things living sort of in the mental plane, and the spiritual plane is no less complex. And there are many types theoretic and astral and noetic and causal and all this stuff. And they're ultimately just labels for things for phenomenon that are parts of the human experience. So anyway, back to I am Mr. digression. If you've listened to other episodes of this podcast, you'll learn that I like to go off on tangents, but it's all relevant, I promise. So, the concept of the psycho pump is somebody who helps people after they die. And in shamanism, you might actually help people through the dying death and dying process. You know, there there are, you know, people out there today who are considered like death, doulas, who helped people sort of physically through physically and mentally through the dyeing process. And people who practice shamanism it's part of their job and has been so for a long long time. So I have you done it's not my primary thing. But I have done a fair amount of psychopomp work I have worked with people who have died recently I have worked with spirits who died many years ago but we're stuck. We you might call them ghosts or you know, spirits that you encounter on the sort of the plane that we exist on which shamans consider the middle world. Right, it's where we get mid guard or Middle Earth from mid guard being the Norse realm for where we live and Middle Earth being the JRR Tolkien version and The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings series. Right so and you know, same same concept, it's the spiritual overlay of the world that we live in. Again, it you know, we're there all these layers to us and all these layers to the world that we live in, and the beings that we encounter here. So, sometimes spirits get stuck, we might call them ghosts in you know, shamanic, thinking, or at least in my tradition, we do not, like, exorcise ghosts, like kick them out, bottle them up, trap them do things to them, because they're suffering beings, they don't have a body anymore. So they're not suffering from pain. But they're, they're spiritually suffering if they're stuck, even if they don't know that they're stuck You know, they're suffering from the perspective that their existence could be much more pleasant if they went to where they were supposed to go. So what happens after we die is that a conscious part of us our soul body separates or from our THEARC body and from other parts of us and this is the part that you know is is sort of may consider it an astral body. If you want to get really technical I'm not going to go too far down the metaphysical bodies path because that could be there many volumes of many books written about all of that stuff, and I could only very briefly touch on that topic. But it is you know, that that would be a very huge tangent. And I'm also not you know, I'm also not the the expert on that either, but I do know that you know, parts of you separate from your physical body, the body, the body dies, the etheric body separates the astral body separates from from the body.

There is a deeper connection. There's a deeper connection to divinity that exists. That is sort of the true self that is the spark of divine light that's within us that is an unborn, undying, incorruptible. That part goes on as it is in because That part is so formless, we can sort of visualize it as a spot of bright light. But it really is formless. It sort of exists outside of time and space. And so while we might think of it as being inside the body for, for the easy sake of getting in touch with it, and visualizing and that sort of thing, it doesn't really exist inside the body, so it doesn't need to separate from the body at the, at the point of death. So sometimes what happens if somebody, somebody is going through the dyeing process, will say, let's say somebody is sick, and they're in hospital, and maybe they're coming in and out of consciousness, or they're in a coma, or, you know, that sort of thing, very frequently, loved ones will experience visitations, we'll see that loved one who is in the hospital and not quite dead yet. Or you know, that that person will reach out or what have you, and what's going what's going on there is that the astral body really is starting to separate person is in the dying process, the astral body is trying to separate or starting not trying, it is starting to separate, it's happening, slowly sort of happening at the pace at which the body is shutting down. And this is not you know, this is not, it's not painful, it's not you know, anything, it's just it is what it is, it's it's what, you know, it's part of the dying process. So when people have near death experiences, and come back, they frequently report being outside of their bodies, sometimes, you know, they somebody ties on an operating table, they they can, you know, look down and see surgeons working on them and hear the conversations that are going on, even though the body is under heavy anesthesia, and maybe even technically dead. So, so the astral at the, at the time of death, or even as a person is dying, the astral body really loses touch with the body because the astral body is going to survive and go on to where it's supposed to go. So this happens, and these visitations happen, and they very frequently happen right after death, even if death is sudden, you know, or you know, for a period of time, lots of people have you know, have come to me that they're seeing loved ones who just recently died passing on information, either in dreams or they're seeing them or they're smelling something that reminds them of the person or whatever. These are not always just tricks of the mind of the grieving mind. Sometimes these are actual visitations. Very frequently they happen in dreams because we're much more open in our dreams, and this is when the spirits can, can contact us. So in my experience, very often, in fact, most of the time when people die, this the, what you might call the spirit, the astral body sticks around for a number of days, checking in on loved ones, and going about perhaps some unfinished business, but primarily, I see this happening with people checking in on loved ones. And then most of the time, they cross over to some kind of afterlife. And that's not healthy. Because I have worked with people who were murderers, people who were in the Italian Mafia, who had murdered people and were relatives of the person I had as a client and I helped them cross over and they did not wind up going to hell Hmm So like I said, in my experience, and my firsthand experience that that isn't the thing. So the you know, the astral part of us this, you know, this, which is really really conscious part of us, crosses over

to another side. And again, there there are multiple parts that make up our spiritual body and they kind of go in different directions and this was recognized by many, many cultures over time, the multiple parts of the body right the you know, the spirit and you know, the energy body. You know, the, the soul body, all of these things. And so again, I'm not going to go down the metaphysics path. about what happens to all of these different parts, you know, you can look at the ancient Egyptian beliefs for example, that this part went here and this part did this and this part did this. So yeah, there's you know, there's a separation that happens, there's a separation of, you know, astral and physical and mental and all of these things. But your astral holds memories of what, what you went through in life, it can hold on to wounding all kinds of stuff. And so you go, you go to an afterlife. So here's the part about the afterlife. So what the afterlife is like, depends significantly on your personal and cultural beliefs. So if you think that heaven is or the afterlife or whatever is up, you tend to go up, and you'll see clouds and you'll see loved ones. And you'll see this and you'll see that you'll see all you'll experience all kinds of things. Because the reality is that spirit and these realms, they're non physical, so they don't have time, space and form other than what we give to them. And so we can experience them as anything. So there's work that's done if you go ever go through a an apprenticeship in shamanism and you do death and dying work, where you actually crossover and you have you have to do that you have to see what it's like you have to experience it. And I can tell you, having been there numerous times, and having taught people how to go there and having lead people there, that it is warm and welcoming and inviting and beautiful, and there is no pain and there's no suffering. And there's no anxiety and there's no stress. There is joy, and there is there is peace and there is what you would want to experience there. So I'm going to give you I will give you I'm going to give you an example and I will because I don't talk about you know I hold client work very confidential I'm going to anonymize the way I describe this and you know, give some details will be a little bit vague. So I was working with somebody who asked me to go check in on a beloved aunt who had passed away a number of years ago. And I didn't have any details other than this person's name. And about in I believe, you know, the year and the location of their death. And so I journeyed shamanic journey is like, like a very visual meditation where, you know, shamanic practitioner actually splits off part of their consciousness and it can travel to other realms. And so you know, I traveled to this person's art and I don't you know, I don't take for granted that I'm seeing objective truth right like I'm seeing something on a spiritual plane and my mind is making some sense out of it by you know, painting pictures and letting me have a conversation with somebody so when I got there there was this woman an older woman who I could physically describe and she was standing on you know, cliff overlooking the sea and there was a sunset and she was painting just painting a beautiful picture of the sunset and I had a conversation with her briefly and she said you know, the afterlife is really amazing I can

you know, I can I've always wanted to paint sunsets but there was happened too fast but here I can, you know, just think I want to paint a sunset and the sunset lasts as long as I need it to and I can paint a picture so there's really no painting sunsets and she could keep a sunset going for, you know, her experience of ours. You know, time works really differently there. But you know what, what we would experience as ours, she could keep the sunset sort of still campaigns and have a beautiful experience. And she relayed to me that she was you know, visiting another relative frequently But they were playing card games together in this other relatives kitchen and all these things. So okay, you know, came back from the journey. And I relayed this information to the client and said, you know, your aunt's very happy. She's painting pictures. And she said to me, oh, yeah, my aunt was a painter, which is not something I knew before I went. And I said, Well, you know, she's visiting her sister, and they're playing cards in her kitchen. And she said, Yes, that's my grandmother who passed before she did and before that happened, they used to play cards in her kitchen all the time. And that was one of their favorite activities. So you know, in the afterlife, you can visit loved ones who have passed and and loved ones do make trips back they do visit us they do have visitations, you know, that I get consulted about that very frequently to to look in on us. So that happens as well. So let me talk about reincarnation a little bit. So reincarnation is something I absolutely 100% believe in. I have experienced what are called past life returns, which is information coming back to me from past lives that I had no way of knowing otherwise. And this is common, you'll see it in sort of Tibetan Buddhism where they pick new Lamas like the Dalai Lama or whatever and you know when they have candidates that are trying to figure out who this next incarnation is, they will you know, present certain tests to these candidates and the candidates will be able to pick out belongings from the person who were there are reincarnating from Um, so how you know, if we go into the afterlife and we you know, we hang out there and we do what we're doing and and what have you. How on earth do we reincarnate? Like, why how could there be anybody in the afterlife? And if we reincarnate So the answer to that is relatively complex and too complex to again, get into the metaphysical details. But I will say this, that my understanding and my experience is that it is a part of you, that reincarnates It's a part of your soul body, and a part of your aesthetic makeup and a part of you that comes into a new body. So the you are basically a spiritual ancestor to your next incarnation, it is sort of like, My children, I pass my I pass my DNA, or, you know, they get half of their DNA for me, I pass that on to them, but I also don't cease to exist. And that's probably the best way I can describe it.

You know, your, your entire consciousness does not reincarnate. Because the Did you would be born remembering everything. And that doesn't, that doesn't exactly happen. But you can, you can get in touch with memories, and you can have experiences because you are connected. you're connected on this, this sort of chain that goes back to the beginning of time. So you are your own ancestor, and your own descendant and all of those things. You know, and in the future, I'll do a whole I'll do a whole podcast about reincarnation. And I know there are different beliefs from different places about reincarnation, and some people don't believe in it at all. And to be honest, I'm not exactly sure what happens with people who don't believe in reincarnation at all if they reincarnate. My feeling is they do because you know, for a number. I believe that for a number of reasons. One because there are still lessons to learn. Which is kind of the reason we ran reincarnate into bodies like you can think of, you know, physical birth as like we're we're starting school over again. We Got a bunch of stuff we've got to learn here we've got to experience. And the way to do that is through incarnating into a physical body. And yes, that includes trauma and pain and all kinds of things that we think of as not so nice, not so pleasant, not wonderful. And that makes things kind of complicated when we see if you, you know, view, God in the universe in really black and white terms and good and evil. Everything that happens to us that's good comes from God, and everything that happens to us that's bad comes from the devil. You know, that having that sort of black and white binary vision of reality is not particularly helpful. It's not, and it's really, really leads a lot of people astray. You know, because the universe, the universes, and reality, are much more complicated and much, much, much more complicated than that. So to give, like, a sort of silly example, right? Let's say a bear kills me and eats me, I'm walking through the woods, and a bear eats me for dinner. Well, that would be a terrible thing from my perspective, right? But would we say that bear is evil? is an evil bear that bear just malicious and evil? Does that bear have evil intent? pre, you know, pre plan killing me for revenge? Or because it hates the, you know, the color of my skin? or what have you any anything, anything that we attribute to people being evil? Or? or what have you? You know, and I think most people would say, No, a bear is just doing what a bear does. Right? So and, you know, while that would be tragic for the people who loves me, you know, bears do kill other animals, and sometimes people and for food, and so do tigers, and so do you know, other animals. And as parts of, you know, as, as human animals, we are not always at the top of the food chain. We have technology that helps us do that, but not always. And, and so, you know, the world is much more complicated the world as we experience it is much more complicated than just dividing everything into good and evil. Good things are good and bad things are evil, and, and there's no in between. And so that, you know, that the things that happen to us can be tragic, they can be traumatic, they can be painful,

you know, can sometimes feel like the universe is punishing us. All of that. And I understand that, and I get that. And dying can seem very tragic. And certainly the people who grieve, who grieve for you can't experience your death is traumatic or, or what have you. But again, that's putting sort of human middle world values on things. It's just a, it's a perspective, right? I'm not saying grief is a perspective. Grief is an you know, grief is a natural process that human beings go through. And it's important, it's an important process. It's not comfortable grieving is not comfortable. It's not happy. It's not Oh, how, how joyous I am that I grieve a loss. But it appears to be very important to our minds and spirits to to grieve loss. To go through that process in problems, because problems occur when the grief process is interrupted or stunted or repressed. Right. And people grieve for a lot of different reasons, right? They can grieve. We don't just grieve other people dying, we grieve the end of relationships. we grieve the loss of a job sometimes or anything that is a loss, we can go through a grief period. Well, death is a much more sort of final grief, but the ends of marriages bring grief the ends of, you know, friendships, the end of a job, the end of you know, I remember feeling a little lost when I graduated from high school and then again when I graduated from college, right? My life changed significantly, both of those both of those times. And feeling some grief about that, and, you know, in relationships that broke up feeling grief after that, even when it was mutual decision, you know, an amicable or it was my decision for my mental health to break up with somebody you know, there's still grieving process and that is natural. Everybody, everybody does it, everybody who's not a sociopath, I would think, in some way. And, and so that grieving appears to be healthy. And it's important part for us to come to grips with, with death and dying. So kind of recap a little bit to bring it back around. You know, when you have an understanding that death is part of the net natural cycle, you know, we're born, we go through the light life stages, and we die, our body dies. And it happens to everybody and has happened to everybody, throughout time. You know, it happened to Jesus and Buddha and yes, you can believe that Jesus was resurrected. And yes, you can believe that, you know, Buddha's spirit went on to a different realm. But their bodies died at some point. So it doesn't matter how enlightened you are or what have you. You know, and yes, there are there are belief systems that believe in physical immortality, I know there are, you know, suppose did Taoist practices that make people immortal you know, physically immortal. You know, and alchemy and alchemy. You know, in western alchemy, for example, there people are looking for the Philosopher's Stone, which grants immortality. And the real secret to that is that it is a spiritual process. And, yes, there are physical practices. But back, you know, when people were practicing alchemy in the, you know, in the Renaissance era, and stuff like that, spiritual and physical experimentation, were not separate things, right. So Isaac Newton, for example, believed that the mechanistic,

you know, clockwork way that the physical universe worked Newtonian, you know, inventor of Newtonian physics and inventor of calculus and the way that, you know, planets moved and all of this stuff, he believed that that was proof of proof of God, proof of spiritual reality. And he had Isaac Newton had copies of numerous spiritual texts, including the Emerald tablet, which is, you know, a famous hermetic document outlining, you know, spiritual laws. So, again, back then these were not separate pursuits. And yes, people were doing things like trying to turn lead into gold. And you know, a lot of that a lot of that stuff you can take two viewpoints of like one is a lot of alchemical writing was, was, was just that it was people who were doing spiritual, physical experimentation. And those things were not separate, they were looking for the essence of the material world of spiritual aspects behind that. Another part of that is that there is pure spiritual alchemy, and that some of the physical stuff that they wrote about, like the essence of salt in this and that, and these processes of, you know, you know, Solvay and coagula, and all of these things. These were allegorical, and we're meant to hide the spiritual work that they were going that they were doing because it could have been repressed by religious figures or You know, they meant to hide it from people. You know, a lot of spiritual doctrines were were hidden. The word mystery comes from, you know, these schools that were teaching hidden spiritual Mystery Schools were schools that were teaching hidden spiritual realities and techniques and processes and things like that. And these Mystery Schools existed, there are Mystery Schools today, but not like there were, you know, 1000s of years ago, the eleusinian mysteries, for example, in Greece lasted, it was a place you could go and take psychoactive chemicals in communion with the gods lasted for well over 1000 years. And you know, 10s of 1000s, you know, huge complex and 10s of 1000s of people a year would go through whatever it is we went through, but we don't know a lot of it because it was a mystery. But we do know that they drank this beer. I think it was called Chi con and it was basically psychoactive beer it had ergot in it, which is today, what we know as LSD same kind of chemical you know, LSD comes from Oregon, which is a parasitic fungus that lives on certain types of grain. And it is hallucinogenic. And people were probably using psychoactive stuff to basically do shamanic work right to basically do these journeys and visit the afterlife and you know, commune with the gods and goddesses and people who have written about going through these processes. Talk about them is life changing and entheogenic right, embodying embodying the gods so so these you know, these processes these alchemical processes are spiritual and meant to develop the spirit in ways that

you know, the afterlife might be a little bit might be a little bit different, you might have some control over how you reincarnate or you might go on to a place a plane, an existence where you are, you know, more angelic so to speak, although I think angels are actually different species of spirit, but you know, where you have more abilities to help out mankind you have more knowledge, you have evolved more through spiritual knowledge. And I think honestly, that's what most immortality practices that were genuine were about, not about making the physical body immortal, although certainly you know, if you talk about Taoism from China, you know, the some of the practices were very health inducing, right, so they, you know, there are chicoine which are the energy practices, you might be familiar with Tai Chi and you know, the, you know, lots of other practices, energy work that are meant to meant to heal the body and meant to keep the body healthy. And that stuff, you know, that stuff works really well. I've seen, you know, I used to live in Boston. And sometimes I would walk through the park in the morning, through the, you know, through the common which is the, you know, a pretty big park in the middle of Boston. On my way to work. I worked in downtown Boston, and I would see people from the Chinatown community older like really old like maybe 80s 90 year old people from the Chinatown community Chinese elders out in the park exercising and these people were limber energetic, flexible. Healthy you know, I'd see you know, an 80 or 90 year old man like doing pull ups from a tree or you know, using playground equipment or older woman like pick up a stick and doing these acrobatic sword forms with it that sort of thing. Sir, the you know, these are these exercise practices. You know, were meant to keep the body young and healthy. And they should do I mean, gosh, I mean, there's, you know, that proof positive there, but there's plenty of research about Chee Gong and Tai Chi and meditation and all these things about the health giving benefits, but do people physically live forever? And my answer to that is like my answer. To a lot of things, I have not personally ever met somebody who has lived longer than say, the oldest person I've, the oldest person I know is my grandmother who just turned 105. And that's pretty darn old. And I cannot remember meaning somebody older than that. So are there people who have been alive for 200 400 years? And are they people? Are they physical? People? I have not experienced that. Is it a possibility? Or probability? So in an infinite and expanding universe, anything is technically possible? Could there be physical human beings, people in bodies who have lived for hundreds of years? Maybe I just I haven't experienced it. So I'm not going to believe it or disbelieve it at this point. That's what we call healthy skepticism. Right? Until, until there is some at least secondhand knowledge, not just stories or myths or what have you. You know, I'm, I'm not going to buy into that now. Or not that I don't buy into it, it's I'm just going to reserve my judgment about whether I buy into that. Um, there are, there are lots of stories in different systems of belief about immortal beings.

You know, that are gods and goddesses or specially enlightened beings, or what have you, taking physical form. And, you know, My take is that there, you know, the spirit, your spirit is immortal. And these are, you know, if people have encountered these beings, they're probably spiritual, and they may be powerful enough to affect physical reality. Because, you know, I know for a fact that sometimes even just normal human spirits can, can appear physically. I have seen it, I have witnessed spirits, I have met many, many people. If you don't believe in ghosts, that's fine. You haven't experienced one. And the way that I and many people have I have had chilling experiences with spirits. And I know many, many people with a chilling experience with deceased human beings. Witnessing firsthand seeing with physical eyes. So sometimes that can happen. So if you have somebody who is really, really developed again, they've developed this spiritual immortality, this level where they can affect physical reality from a purely spiritual plane. I believe that that's possible. And it's something Yeah, it's something I believe is possible. I haven't. Have I witnessed that, you know, again, I've witnessed some paranormal stuff. I have witnessed some non human spiritual entities that I have seen with my physical eyes that other people I was with saw with their physical eyes. And these could not be humans or projections, or what have you of any kind. And we were not on drugs, I promise you that. But there were a lot of us who saw, you know, been out in the desert and seen huge beings. Where the aliens were they gods were they spiritual creatures? I, you know, I don't know. I think they were spiritual creatures. And I've participated in some Native American ceremonies where there have been spirits present that other people have seen physically as well. So they're, you know, these things are real to me, but I don't think human physical bodies are designed to live forever and can be coaxed with current, technical or spiritual know how into living forever. Very long time. Yes, my grandmother's 105. And who knows how long she will keep going. Maybe she'll be 130. Who knows. But people are living longer and longer. Technology is approaching places where we're understanding we're unlocking a lot of things. Now there are animals on earth that live a very long time. There are sharks and turtles, for example that are hundreds of years old. There are other types of have animals that don't appear to have physical death built into their systems, the way that humans do. The other part of immortality is, you know, if humans could say easily become physically immortal, with the way that we reproduce and use up resources of this planet, we would very quickly have run into an ecological disaster that could have made this a very unpleasant place to live. Imagine being immortal, in a place where you are, you know, you were you lived forever, but you were sick all the time, because the air was so polluted, or there wasn't enough food or there, you know, the water was polluted or there were massive wars over food and resources. You know, because we have seen that in the history of mankind, where there has been where there have been, you know, fights over resources and and, you know, genocides have taken place, you know, wars, all kinds of stuff. So, you know, if it is possible for physical immortality, maybe it's not such a great idea. And again, a lot of the drive towards that is a fear of death.

What I will say is that, you know, being, you know, dying to chew early, like because you live in unhealthy life or an accident happens is a bit tragic, because, you know, you've got more to accomplish here, right? And so the, the healthier you can be, and the longer you can extend your life. As long as you are evolving spiritually and learning the lessons you're supposed to learn. That's probably a good thing. So this has been a very long and 10 gentle, tangent filled conversation while one way conversation talk about death, dying, immortality, the cycles of life. I hope this has been interesting to you. I don't want to run too long. On this episode, I will tackle things like reincarnation and immortality in more depth in future podcasts. If there's something you would like for me to talk about from a shamanic perspective, or a guest you'd like me to try to talk to, I would like to have some more guests. please reach out on my website. The details of that are in the closing. Have you know the the outro of this episode. I love you all. I hope you're staying healthy and well. And I hope this has been useful and given you some things to think about.

Announcer 1:03:43

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 ma i n e s ah am a n.com

Ep34 Divination

Announcer 0:28

Hello, and welcome to speaking spirit where we talk about all things spiritual. Your host, john Moore is a shamanic practitioner and spiritual teacher. And now here's john.

John Moore 0:47

I wish you good morning, though I don't know what time of day it is. I apologize. My voice sounds a little scratchy this morning. I am just getting over a little cold. Nothing too serious. Not to worry. But there has been a cold that has hit everyone. Everyone I know. It is not COVID fortunately, and I've only had it for a couple of days. And I feel much better now that my voice is getting worse. I'm going to be sipping some hot beverage at while I normally sip hot beverage while I do this anyway. Hmm, yeah. So I apologize for my voice. Although it does sound deeper, I can do this some, you know, deeper voice thing cuz my voice is a little scratchy. It's totally fine. I'm good. But as I, as I talk to you this morning, it is we are well into fall now, almost almost to October as I as I'm recording this, and that it's dark, like, in the morning. It's one of the things about fall in winter here in the northern part of the US. It the sun comes up later, and it sets earlier. And that'll happen until winter solstice. In January. You know, some people get seasonal affective disorder, right? They get sort of seasonal depression. And I understand that, like, you know, sunlight really affects us significantly. It affects, you know, our body chemistry and our, you know, the way our brain works and our hormones and all kinds of stuff, you know, just vitamin D alone from the sun light on your skin, you know, in this part of the world, they basically say that everybody should be taking vitamin D, between October and April every year. So anyway, today I'm going to talk hopefully, this will be a little bit of fun, but useful information. And I'm going to talk about divination. And divination is a sort of a, you know, a fun topic, I think, I hope. But, you know, divination is so widely practiced all over the world, all kinds of cultures have different different ways of doing divination, and some are, like super common all over the world. And someone talk about that, and then I'm gonna talk about can you see the future? Um, let's talk about divination a little bit. What is it? What does divination mean? Well, it comes from, you know, the Latin words for to foresee to foretell to predict so it does sort of imply seeing the future. Or it's related to it's related to the word divinity, to be inspired by God to get insight into a question, right. And you know, there are there have been throughout time there have been rituals for divinations appeasement to Gods and you know, these things are obviously called by different names, in different languages in different different cultures. Some of you know, you might think of divination you know, a really, really common one, at least around here is reading tarot cards, right? cartoon cartomancy. There are different you know, lots of people read different kinds of cards, but tarot cards are incredibly popular and I do a little work with Tarot, but I also read another deck which is a little less popular called the Lenormand Decades from the, from the 18th century, comes out of Germany and France. And it was like the, like the Tarot and like regular, you know, playing cards came from a game.

You know, they were used to play used to play games, and then somebody picked them up and started to use them to do divination, to predict things and to give people insight into questions. So you know what I'm gonna talk about them and talk about the tools of divination, and some of the different kinds of divination that are out there. And I'm going to talk about my take on how it works, and how predicting the future works. And why if, you know, if we can divine things, can we win the lottery? For example, can we get, you know, can we get the numbers from the lottery? Why not? Right? If we can, if we can predict the future, I'm gonna talk about my take on all of this, you may have a different take, and that's totally fine. But this is come from experience. And my background in divination comes through shamanism, and I don't do divinatory work kind of on its own, right, people don't come to me for psychic readings are any, any of that sort of thing. But what I, what I do is I work with people from a healing perspective, and I always do journey work in the beginning to gain insight into whatever problem they've come to me with, or, you know, questions that they have, or what healing work should be done, and what their part is in that, in that sort of thing. So, um, you know, from that, and that's a form of, you know, it's a form of divination. I just happens to be in, you know, inch dramatic journey. And you want to talk a little bit about that, as well. We'll talk about why. Why that matters. And I you know, maybe I'll give you a couple of stories. I don't like to, I don't like to come off as bragging about stuff. So but I do want to share a couple of stories of doing divination, work for people where, you know, something was uncannily spot on as an example. And, you know, when I do that, I'm not taking credit for the work. So I hope, I hope that comes through. When I when I get information, I always get it through helping spirits, I'm not doing the work, I'm just sort of translating it and receiving the message and passing it on. So it's not my information. So I hope it doesn't come across as a brag, but I want to give a couple of examples. I will say that when I started in shamanism, I started studying shamanism. You know, however, many years ago that was now you know, and I was going through, I was going through an apprenticeship with my teacher. And, you know, it was it was not something I wanted to do. You know, I don't want to do divination work. And they think what held me back at that time, was that I was afraid of being wrong. And if I were wrong, it would tell me that I didn't know what I was doing, or that what I was doing was fake, or, you know, that sort of thing. And I also didn't want to give really generic stuff, right? Because you can, you know, there's this, there's this thing with people who are fake psychics, or fake readers, or whatever. And they'll say, there's somebody in your life whose first name starts with a letter J. And of course, everybody knows Jason, john, Jennifer or you know, whatever in whatever is common in your hair. Yeah. Oh, yes, I do know a person in my life of the letter J. Oh, you know, I don't want to do that either. But, you know, I surrendered to it and turned out to be something I was fairly, fairly, fairly good at. And not, you know, I don't put any again, I don't put any of the skill. There's not a skill, this skill for me is to get out of the way and not try to think I know more, or interpret the information that comes in. So when I say See information in journey for a client I just relate it and it doesn't necessarily always mean something to me I don't know you know oh I see I'll give an example and with one client you know I was

this person you know lived in an area of the world that is doesn't have a lot of turtles right? And I was like I keep seeing this turtle like almost like swimming around and I don't know if that means anything to you. Well, you know, my grandmother who passed away a few years ago collected turtles and she even had turtles which is weird in this part of the world and you know, there was there was a connection for her there and it meant didn't mean anything to me so I was able to you know, sort of get out of the way and just relay the information and she could do with it what you know, she could she could take the information and and use it in whatever way made sense for her. So you know, with divination, the person who's who's providing the information, no matter where it comes from, that is that is really the key. And so there are all kinds of different tools of divination. So this morning, just out of curiosity, before I started recording this podcast, I looked up the Wikipedia page for methods of divination and if you if you want to you can do the same thing and it is fascinating Lee huge so there's all of these different words that are relate to different types of divination, a lot of them end with the word Mansi like Abba Mansi is you know, like the using birds the movement of birds to as a form of divination. biblio Mansi or, or charter Mansi is, you know, using using books, you know, usually you would turn to, you know, grab a book off the shelf, turn to a random page and point and then read that read whatever was under your finger as a way to answer a question. But there's tons and tons I mean, hot, probably hundreds, hundreds and hundreds of different forms of divination from throwing bones throwing dice. There's also you know, augury are seeing when you see people look into a crystal ball or look into fire or their stories of people using like looking at their thumbnails some sort of reflective surface to to see things and so you know, I just I find it interesting that that this is so common and forms of divination they're sort of forms of divination that show up over and over again you know, like reading the end trails of animals. Sorry for that you know, a bit of disgustingness but reading the entrails of animals is pretty common in lots of cultures you know, whether the animals were hunter hunted or ritually sacrificed or killed for food that seems to be you know, super common you know, throwing bones or lots or you know, some kind of thing where you throw things on the ground and see where they land I know there are cultures where they throw cowrie shells, little sea shells out and read those so there's all kinds of methods and you know tools for divination. There are a few that I like besides doing journeying I do like cartomancy I, and my current preferred deck is Lenormand deck, as I said earlier, and I like it because I can get I can do you know, I can pull nine cards and get a huge amount of information from it and very specific, and really hone in on the information. You know, I like Tarot as well. And I like some of the traditional decks like the rider Waite tarot deck because there is lots of alchemical symbolism, and astrological symbolism and all kinds of stuff in there. So I just, you know, I like that stuff. And there's a lot of, there's a lot of depth in Taro, where Lenormand is very simple. The symbols are very simple, but the combinations and the positions that the cards come up in Are you know, less A lot of nuance to the, to the meaning. So regardless, you know, it shouldn't be a surprise that the reader or the person doing the divination is really the important factor here, right? So

you know, anybody can get a, you know, deck of tarot cards and a book on what the, what the cards mean and throw out a spread. But really good readers Sears, what have you are using the cards as sort of a springboard for their intuition. And I would say that's true for most forms of divination, you know, divinatory work using outside tools, whether that be throwing bones, or rocks, or, you know, whatever there are, you know, there are some simpler systems where you, you know, it's very technical, there are the, there's a form of throwing these discs of coconut shells, and, you know, the way they land gives you Yes, or no answers. Or, you know, throwing, throwing coins for eaching, reading, for example, would give you very specific technical answers to things. But I still think interpreting that stuff falls into the realm of intuition. And somebody who's going to be really good at any of those things is going to come through intuitively. So let's, you know, let's talk a little bit about what, you know, what I think is going on, when somebody shuffles a deck of tarot cards, or throws bones or, you know, that sort of thing. So I think the, you know, the way that it works is that there's a certain amount of chaos and randomness. And if I'm holding, if I'm holding a deck of cards, and I shuffle it, you know, I am not a machine that's doing, you know, that is, you know, going to shuffle the same way every single time, there is amount of chaos entered, you know, physical chaos entered into the system. And if I, you know, have a, you know, have an intention about the question I'm asking, or the person I'm reading for, or that sort of thing, you know, will say that I, you know, my system of chaos, my body can interact with these cards, so that they will come up in a certain order. And I think that is true for lots of sort of lot casting, ways of divination, throwing bones, throwing coins, you know, rocks, that sort of thing. So we're looking at systems of chaos, where there can be all kinds of different answers, and, you know, so then the cards, you know, then I pull the cards or throw the lats or whatever. And then that's where the interpretation starts, right. And, you know, good a good reading, you know, if I was working with a person and working with deck of cards would have the person cut the deck of cards. And the reason is, I'm using their intuition to know where to cut the cards so that the reading is tailored to them. And so that there's intuition working there as well. There's intuition telling me how many times to shuffle, and I feel there's a point at which I feel Okay, that's enough. You know, the deck is the way it's supposed to be. And then, you know, the person I'm reading for would, would use their intuition to decide where to cut the deck. And then this is where the work kind of begins, you know, it would lay the cards out. And there are, you know, specific meanings of the cards, but, you know, I would tailor them using my intuition to the person, the person that I'm reading the questions that are coming up the situation, you know, gather more information and that way I would be able to, you know, slip into the space where my intuition is coming through.

Now I do here in my home state of Maine, I have a spot on the radio once a week where listeners call in and have me interpret their dreams I do that is only romancey Which is divination by dreams. You know, and some of that is divinatory, where I'm like, Okay, this is, you know, this means this for you. But very frequently people just want like the meaning Why am I dreaming this or that? And, you know, I could be one of those people who looks into looks in a dream dictionary and decides what a dream means based on you know, x, y, z, you dreamed of a baby, that means you are I don't know, I don't even know, because I don't own a dream diction. But whatever, you know, you've seen them, there are books that say, this is what this dream means. All of that, all of it is hogwash. Because everybody's dream system of symbols is completely different. They're there, there are commonalities, right, there are commonalities, a few commonalities, there are some symbols that are somewhat universal. Very frequently, for example, water is symbolic of, sort of the unconscious, the unconscious parts of ourselves, but not always. And so there is a tremendous amount of contexts. And when I interact with these people, you know, over the, I'm on the phone, they're on the phone, there, there is a point at which I get just intuitive information from helping spirits to interpret their dream. And, you know, there was one last week where no a woman kept getting in her dream, which is recurring, people kept handing her other people's babies and she was dropping them and this and that, and, you know, I got a clear, a very clear message that she was, this was about her shouldering too much responsibility, taking things on that were not necessarily her responsibility or taking too much responsibility for, for what was going on. And in, you know, she admitted that she was a, you know, small business owner, and she was kind of a perfectionist where everything had to be run her way. And so she, she was doing everything, and her life was kind of crazy. And then I also said, You know, I get the feeling that you're worried about either gossip, or what people are, are thinking about you, and she's like, Oh, my gosh, I am so worried. Now, you know, only the smallest part of that came from the dream symbolism, you know, the larger part of that came intuitively. And, you know, it would have been, you know, I might have been able to get more, you know, these segments are like, five minutes long. So I don't get a tremendous amount of time to spend with the person who's calling in. But I know, if I were sitting across from the person, I would be looking at their body language and getting information that way. And that's not, that's not cheating. That's not cheating. It's taking in all of the information that I have, which includes intuitive information, information that I haven't gathered from physical senses, but also the information that I've gathered from physical senses, right? Because, um, you know, if she just called in and they said, okay, she had a dream, what does it mean and I didn't have any of the information. Um, you know, I most likely wouldn't have been able to get anything without going into journey. I could potentially journey and get some information from her, but I do like it. It's very helpful for me to combine what I know with information that's coming to me from spirit and I think that's true and all divination and I don't think it's cheating it's not it's not cheating it you know, anything that gives you better information. If you're just reading somebody's physical body and not providing intuitive information that would be not, you know, that would be not divination, it would be something else. And maybe it's fine in a certain context, right? So for example, therapists, I was talking to someone I know who is a therapist, and

I, you know, I don't have a background in therapy haven't been trained in it, but they are trained or they know both when somebody is lying to them, right? They can tell when somebody lying to them by reading body language and voice cues and that sort of thing. And, and they can tell, like if somebody is hiding, like has hidden anger or like there are their feelings that they're not talking about. And some of that might be intuitive, but there is, you know, there is training, there is experience that comes along with that there's there is reading body language, and you know, they're able to do that, because of the work that they do with people that are, you know, that is not the way that we, you know, we normally interact one on one with people. And they, you know, they interact at a, in a different way. And it gives them insight information. And the use that to provide better therapy to their clients, you know, to to, you know, see when somebody is being untruthful about something, and try to figure out why that why that is maybe or if somebody is hiding anger or some other feelings? Why are they hiding that? Why are they suppressing that? What's going on there? What's the problem there? So at least therapists who are good, who are really good do that? Which is why I realized, you know, nowadays, you know, with TV with COVID, there's a lot of remote therapy, and I think that's fine. Over video. I don't know, I mean, there, there are services out there where you can get just text based therapy where you're texting back and forth. And I don't know how maybe it's useful. Maybe it's useful to some people. I don't know how that I don't know how that is, but you're missing, missing some big components there. So So divination, and let's talk about predicting the future a little bit. And again, you know, I'm going to tell a couple personal stories, and this is not I hope you don't take it as a brag, I'm not trying to brag and say, hey, look at me, I'm this big psychic, I can get I'm not. And I'm not, I'm not particularly psychic. I don't. You know, when I'm when I'm in a space, and I'm doing work with somebody, I do get intuitive information. But most of my information comes from journaling. And it all comes from somebody, it all comes from helping spirits that I work with, none of it comes from me, I'm not generating the information. And so I give all credit to helping spirits. But I do want to talk, you know, I'll talk about how I think predicting things in the future works. And if we could, if we can predict things in the future, why can't we avoid things like terrorist attacks? Or why can't we avoid school shootings? Or why can't we win win the lottery, that's a great example winning the lottery. So this was a few years ago, I was working with a client who was living in a different country, I work with people all over the world. And she contacted me and said that she was having problems with the place she was living, she was living in an apartment in the city, where she lived. And there was, I believe, there was a rodent problem in the apartment, and there was a mold problem. And so she was she had to move out for health reasons. And, you know, when understands that it was causing health issues for her. And so she wanted some information, if I could gather information about where she might look for places to live, or where she was going to wind up or, you know, that sort of thing. So I said, Well, you know, I I don't know, I will do my best, I will try to see what I can see. And I, you know, haven't tried to predict the future a whole lot. But I'll you know, I'll look into it. So I, you know, it's a journey for her. And I kept seeing a red farmhouse out in the country.

And so I talked to her after the journey, and I said, Yeah, I see a red red farmhouse in the country. And she said, Well, I don't know, you know, I don't know what that means. I live in, I live in the city. So you know that, that not really helpful. I said, Well, you know, I'm sorry, I just give you the information that I get, and I don't know what it means. It might be metaphoric. You know, there might be an apartment with a picture of a red farm. house in the country, I don't know, you know, I don't know. But just take that information in and you know, something will come up that's related to that, I'm pretty sure that something will come up that's related to that, that will give you an indication of where you're supposed to be. And so I don't know, about three months later, or so I get an email from this woman. And she said, I want you to look at, I'm living in my new house, and I want you to look at the view out my living room window. And she sent me a photo, and our living room window was a red farmhouse out in the country, she had moved out of the city, she had found a house to rent that looked out over a red farmhouse. And it you know, and I will tell you that it was exactly as I had seen it in my journey. And so this was, you know, for me, like a real, a real hit, obviously, like a really accurate information. So we call that a hit, right? Um, but again, you know, the information didn't come from me, and I didn't know what to make of it. And the person at the time was like, I didn't, you know, I live in the city, I don't know, and I'm, you know, so my reaction to that as well. You know, I'm just happy, I'm telling you what I saw, and you can you believe it, just believe it, take it in. You know, but this is just, this is just what I saw, and I'm not gonna change, you know, I'm not gonna if I changed, oh, you know, no, no, no, now that I think about it, I saw an apartment two blocks away. That would be not, that would be not honest. And I'm not not going to do that. I do have, you have very strong ethics about the work that I do. And so when I journey, I always tell people, when I tell people, what I see, there are exceptions, where I hold things back from people, when I feel like it's going to be harmful. But other than that, I tell people exactly what I see. And they can make whatever meaning out of that they want to make, I don't interpret. That's not my, it's not my job to interpret. It's just to provide information. You know, although you know, in some divination work, if I'm working with cards, there's a level of interpreting, interpreting the cards, but even then, the person has to take the information in and figure out how that applies to their life. So what's going on with predicting the future. And this is, this is my take on, this is my take on how things work timewise. So first of all, you know, we experience time, in a very consistent way, you know, movement, we only move forward through time. And we, you know, we, you know, in time travel, you know, goes at the same pace, constantly, like a minute as a minute, although it certainly can feel like much longer than that, if you're waiting in line or something along those lines, or can go much faster if you're doing something you enjoy. Time flies when you're having fun, the old expression. So, you know, our experience of time can be very relative, when we're talking about measurement, and scientific, with scientific instruments, even just clocks, it's very consistent. Second, Second Amendment is a minute, and it only moves forward and that sort of thing. So we don't generally jump forward in time and jump back and that sort of thing. on a physical level, time and space are very, excuse me, very much linked to matter to mass. And, you know, E equals MC squared, right? Hmm. energy and matter are interchangeable. And, you know, time works differently in space than does on earth because of the mass of the Earth and gravity, you know, gravitational time dilation. And, you know, I won't go down the physics rabbit hole, but

time is very much linked to matter, to material things to mass, time and space. And so, Spirit does not have any mass in this world, in the middle world. And so spirit is sort of outside of time. I remember one time, it had been, I had finished, I'd finished training in my apprentice to ship my shamanic apprenticeship with my teacher and then I went out. She was teaching you know, there's about a year or year and a half later, she was teaching a soul retrieval seminar at a big retreat center and I had gone out, I sign up for that and going out there and met up with her, I saw her there, and she came up, and she gave me a big hug. And I said, you know, it's been a really long time, and she goes, time doesn't exist, and walked off, just kind of left me with that. Um, so, in the realm of spirit time, is a little loosey goosey. It's a little more flexible, it's a little it's a little more timeless. This is where prophecy and things like that come from. Um, but that leaves us with a bit of a conundrum, right? It leaves us with the idea that we have freewill. And how can we have freewill if the things of the future are already determined? And the answer to that is, I don't really think they are. I think when I get information about the future, it is probable probabilistic meaning there is there is probability not certainty. And I think there are many, many different timelines and we exist on, you know, many, many different dimensions. And we have parallel lives. And every time we make choices, there's a split off from the timeline. And so what people who are looking into the future are looking at our probabilities. If I continue down this path, what is the most probable outcome, right? If things stay the same, if things stay the way they are, what is likely to happen? And, you know, you can hone in on that a little bit, right, you can hone in on that, like, if I continue to eat pizza, three meals a day, I will get heart, you know, I will get heart disease in you know, the next five years, that's probably a really good prediction based on the way things are going right now. Um, but people who can, you know, travel in spirit or, you know, do predictive work or intuitive are tapping into the spiritual realms, which are, you know, following that the probable time following the probable timeline to bring back more accurate information. You know, that, you know, if you remember the the play Julius Caesar, written by Shakespeare, beware the Ides of March, right, something bad is gonna happen the Ides of March. And, you know, being warned of this, Caesar still goes to the Senate and gets stabbed by everybody, and dies. So, the idea is that we still, we still have choices, we still have, you still can change your future if you get some divinatory work done. That says, you know, you are going to meet the love of your life at your current job. And tomorrow, you go quit your job. Well, you are going to intercede with that probable timeline. Um and, and so you can, you know, you can change the future outcomes. So, why then, if we can look at, you know, these probable outcomes, probable futures, why can we, why can't people just, you know, people who are psychic, why can't they just read, you know, win the lottery every single time? Well, you know, I don't know that that hasn't happened. But you know, when you think about the lottery, as a system of chaos, right.

You know, you take a Big Lottery like we have, we have a lottery called Powerball here in the in the US, and the odds of winning that are something like one in 200 and something million. That is a huge, you know, that is a huge probability to try to predict a huge set of things and the way that Powerball is cheap. In his, you know, they have a hot, you know, hopper full of ping pong balls with numbers on them. And those balls get, you know, pulled in. So there's, you know, there's this there's, they're stirred up and so there's a bunch, a whole lot of physical chaos that's introduced to the system that makes it very hard to predict, you know, you're predicting something with the accuracy of one and 200 million. If you could do that, that would be pretty amazing. You know, to follow, you know, the probability, you know, each timeline, the way that the, you know, the balls are sitting in the machine now, and the machines are moved out, and, you know, they just long and there's airflow and all kinds of things that go on chaos, right, chaos. So systems with a tremendous amount of chaos are really hard to predict. Look at the weather. Now, technology is making weather prediction. better, more accurate, but it's still not 100% still not on all the time. Because weather patterns, even though they can be very huge. And you can say, Okay, well, you know, we think this hurricane is going to travel here, but it might turn here and turn it because there's too much chaos in a system like that, to be 100% accurate with it, everything is probable. And, and you know, frequently hurricanes do things, or large storms do things that we that are not predicted. And that can cause significant problems. So weather is a thing. You know, that can be that can be very difficult because the amount of chaos in the system. There are things with, you know, there are certain things with less chaos right there, you know, like, I'm looking for a job, or I'm looking for a new place to live. Well, there are only so many places that I could look. And even though you know, in my example, it was very improbable that you know, this person was going to be looking in the country somehow that was on her timeline that she was going to move out of the city. And that was a that was a probability and the way I think the information came to me is my helping spirits said this is the most probable outcome based on a bunch of factors that I could have no idea about. And I realize like I'm trying to break a definition down into you know, a really scientific way but this is how I'm I'm fairly scientific. And the way that I think about things even though I'm, you know, a spiritual person and believe there are you know, that worlds exist that scientific instruments cannot measure at this point in time. And spirit is real and there are limits to, to what we can measure and understand with current science. So this is where I think divination can can flourish in this is where people that the person who is providing the information can, you know, as they get better and better. What we know is there are certain brainwave patterns that make people better at doing divinatory work or even doing shamanic journey. So when I journey when I do a shamanic journey, you know, it's basically like, an active meditation I close my eyes. in spirit, I go on a journey, but I use rhythm like drumming, or a rattle or, you know, a soundtrack with drums and rattles, normally how I journey and that's common all over the world using different types of rhythm. And what we discovered when we invented you know, electronic brain scanning and you know, brain monitoring equipment like e Gs.

It is that people who were journeying and who we're good at it and we're bringing back good information, as well as people who were getting hits, reading, you know, reading tarot cards or doing psychic reading. we're generating what we call theta brainwaves, which are, I believe, four to four to eight cycles per second. So these waves, you know, they go up and down, four to eight times a second, relatively slow compared to our normal waking state and even slower than when we're daydreaming or just falling asleep. So it's, it's a little paradoxical because you're wide awake, but your brain, your brainwaves, hat brainwaves have slowed down, but the amplitude becomes higher, right which means that the height of the waves the power of the waves, becomes higher. And for whatever reason this this brainwave state makes us more intuitive it makes us more in touch more in tune. And knowing that knowing that now is interesting because we can you know, if I put together a drum like a recorded drum track for example, I can do it at exactly the right timing to drive the exact brain waves that I want to so in fact I do there are if you go to my website, there are shamanic drumming tracks available there for free. You can you can listen to those and you know, if you I would say you can't Don't you know, don't try to journey on your own please seek out response, you know, responsible instruction on that because there are there are ins and outs to that but but you can you can find those and listen to those on my website. They're freely available under Resources and but those are tuned to the exact rhythm of the brainwave states that we want to use for journey. But people who are very good at divination, psychic reading or tarot cards, or reading bones, or whatever, generate these rhythms naturally on their own, or, or as, you know, as many as we have tested with, Eg equipment. I would definitely like to see more of that I would like to see more crossover with sort of science and science and spirit, I think it's, I think those things don't have to live in different worlds and deny one at one another. You know, I think there are there's this bogus idea that if you are a scientist, you have to be a material, material realist atheist or something. And that's not true. I know, lots of people who are scientists or in scientific fields who are spiritual. But they're, you know, those things live very frequently in separate worlds. There was a very recent somebody wrote a thesis on you know, quantum did some quantum physics testing to do with shamanism. I have to dig it up. It's very, very interesting stuff that we're using quantum ease and I don't exactly know how that works.

To see what was going on with shamanic healers and with, with the clients they were working with, and, you know, lots of interesting results there. You know, one thing is that their brainwaves would synchronize. So when the shamanic healer was working with the client, their their brainwaves started to go in sync. And that's pretty interesting phenomenon. But there's a lot there's a lot of really cool stuff there. And I do like that intersection of science and spirit. You know, and I do I understand that there are things that I experienced empirically that cannot be measured, or understood by science at this point in time. And that's fine. That's fine. But you know, I, I do have a scientific mind and I try to look at things like how does divination work? How do we predict the future but not be able to grab lottery numbers? And you know, I will journey about it, I'll ask my helping spirits, why can't you know? Why can't you give me the lottery numbers? Well, because you're not meant to win the lottery. And, um, you know, there's too much chaos in the system, we can give you some probabilities, but you know, it's one in one and 200 million. And you're more likely to get hit by lightning three times in your life than to win the lottery or two, you know, all kinds of things are much more likely than that probability wise. So having some understanding of probability is is I think, helpful as well. I think it's helpful for most people, we tend to us under we have cognitive bias Is that are we under estimating overestimate probabilities of things based on informational biases, cognitive biases, right? So there's one called the availability heuristic, which says that we overestimate things that we can, the occurrence of things that we can remember more easily. So things that are dramatic, like a plane crash or a crime, you know, some really horrible crime being reported or, you know, something like that those those stick out to us because they're dramatic. And so people that are exposed to news about those things tend to over estimate the occurrence of that, and that's called the availability heuristic. And so to counter that, you know, understanding a little bit about probability. So the thing with the, you know, the thing that the Coronavirus, you know, that's going on right now, this is a real tangent, I'm sorry. But the thing with this that's going on right now is there are there are a lot of people in United States for whatever reason, who are resisting, getting vaccinated and resisting getting into doing things that they should be doing, like wearing masks and that sort of thing. And they will frequently throw numbers around, but not really understand what they're talking about. And they'll say, Well, you know, if you're, you know, if you are vaccinated or unvaccinated, you have just as much chance of passing the virus on to others. So you know, the virus, you know, the vaccine is useless. And that's not true. I mean, it's 100% not true, you know, vaccinated people get the virus at a rate that is four times less than people who are unvaccinated. And so if you are vaccinated, you're four times less, you're four times less likely to become infected, and so you're four times less likely to be able to pass the virus on to anybody else. You know, that being said, you know, they are saying with it, you know, with the new variants that, you know, the viral load for somebody who's vaccinated or unvaccinated is very similar during a certain phase, and so it is, yet when somebody has an infection, there isn't much difference, however, you're just less likely to get infected, and be able to pass the virus on. So, you know, whatever your feelings about vaccination are, that position is just not true. It's a false position based on a real misunderstanding of probability. Very basic probability, not even, you know, not even really complex problem.

Right. So you know, if you're four times more likely to get get a contagious disease that you can pass on to others, you're four times more likely to be able to pass that on. Very simple, very simple. Um, and then people who are vaccinated are, are, you know, they tend to have fewer symptoms, and, and don't, you know, don't aren't sick for as long. So they may, they may be but we don't know yet contagious for a shorter period of time. And the viral load may reduce, you know, there's some statistics so but, you know, these people are going to latch on to ideas that support their firmly held beliefs, which is another cognitive bias. So, you know, it's called confirmation bias when we, we place more weight on evidence that supports our, our firmly held beliefs. And that is true for everyone, myself included. I'm not, you know, saying that I don't have biases, we all have biases. But that's just what's going on with what's going on here. I do, you know, I do try to look at data and try to allow allow information to change my mind about things certainly has with in shamanism where I was like, I don't, I'm not going to do divination, and I'm not going to be good at it. And then when I got into it, it turned out to be something. Something that I was good at, and something that I wind up doing quite a lot of. So taking in new information and changing your beliefs and opinions about things based on new or better information. That is a way to grow in this world, that is a way to understand things better. And honestly, just live a better life, you know, to not just deny everything that, you know, come comes across, that isn't what you already believe, take everything, take everything for checking, which is a statement that Lester Levinson, his spiritual teacher, I really like, used to say, take it for checking, meaning, you know, even when I, you know, tell clients something that I see in journey, or, you know, somebody reads your cards and gives you some information, it's, you really don't want to just place full weight on that, you always want to check on that and see how it plays out for you. Right, like, like, the person with the red farmhouse in my journey. You know, at first she was like, yeah, that doesn't make any sense, because I live in the city and XYZ. And, you know, it did, it did eventually turn out to be a thing, and she had to email me about it, which I was grateful for, I was happy for that. Because, you know, when I, when I can get a confirmation about something that that's, it makes me feel good for one thing, so there's that part of it, but it's also helpful for me to understand going forward, like, Okay, this is a, this is a probable future, and you might not see how you're going to get there. But something, something like this is very likely to show up on your path. You know, and, and that is, you know, that is precisely precisely what happened. You know, so there was a probability that she was moving out of the city, even if she hadn't accepted it, and there was a, you know, probability based on this house becoming available. Now, I don't know how many houses outside the city or in that area we're going to be up for, for rent, and it happened to have a red farmhouse outside of it, which is what I saw, that was the property, you know, these probabilities kind of lined up. And so it was a bit predictive. But can you predict the weather or maybe without equipment, you know, and there are people who are better at this way better at this than I am, I have had some unbelievable readings before where people got, you know, descriptions of people in my life and,

you know, like, what they're, you know, could even tell what their power animals were, and all kinds of stuff, all kinds of really cool information that could not have been, you know, the probability of guessing all of the information would have been very, very slim. So, yeah, I've had some very uncanny, uncannily accurate divination readings on my behalf. with people who do that sometimes for a living. And, you know, it's always pretty cool. When that happens. I'm not a person who goes to get my tarot cards, read a whole lot or, you know, get psychic readings a whole lot, or that sort of thing. You know, there are people in my life who will read my cards once in a while, you know, like, as a favor, or, you know, or for fun, or, you know, see what, see what's going on. But, you know, and I and I do my own divination work very frequently. But yeah, when it's, when it's on, it's kind of cool. Like, it feels it feels cool when when it's on. You know, and you get some really good information about that. You know, and I've been given, I've been given some warnings about some people doing some nefarious things in my direction, and that's helpful as well. So I can prevent some problems, which I've done, and we're, you know, and worked out really well. You know, I'll wrap up with one thing. So you know, if you are if you are into divination in any way, if you're into readings or scrying, or doing cards or you know, what have you there's a little piece of ethical advice I want to offer, because I like these. I always like to have at least one thing that is sort of useful. In my world in the demonic world, we people who are behaving ethically Do not do work on behalf of people without their permission. So I would not do divinatory work for somebody without them knowing. So I am not going to, you know, read a friend's cards to see what's up for them, if they weren't knowledgeable about it, and gave me their explicit permission. Um, you know, there, there's some things that can happen, where, you know, I've done readings for people, and I say, you know, oh, I see something happening, I see something happening for your son. And this is this is coming up. And this is a problem that you need to be aware of. But I'm not actually doing the work on behalf of the son who's not in the room, I'm doing the work on behalf of this person. And it's a fine line. But I'll tell you that I was I was at I was at a class I was at a drum making classes making my own drum, I have a lot, I have a lot of drums, but was making my own demonic drum with you know, Native American Crafts person who spiritual crafts person who took us through this whole spiritual process of building a hoop drum, and it was very cool event. And whenever in on one of the breaks, I was talking, just talking to a woman chatting with her and she's like, she was a professional psychic, she did readings for a living. And all of a sudden, she started diving into personal stuff about me, you know, she was going into some stuff from my past some traumatic stuff, as a matter of fact, she's like, Well, you know, I do psychic readings for a living and I can see that this happened to you when you were this age and this and she was right, but what a violation. For one thing, she could have risked re traumatizing me, but for the other thing, I didn't give her permission to do that. And it's sort of like rifling through someone's underwear drawer. That's what it felt like. So, you know, ethically don't mess around in other people's business. You know, you frequently if you do divinatory work, you'll get information about other people that are associated with the work that you're doing. So if I'm, you know, I'm writing a book right now and I, like, you know, did did a reading a card reading of,

you know, some information about pub, you know, publishing and that sort of thing. And some some information came up about you know, an older and older woman who's a personal friend, and, you know, in business and dah, dah, and I was like, okay, you know, so there was some information about somebody who I think is, is going to wind up helping me helping me with this book and so but I wasn't during the reading on them or about them. So it was information that came through in relationship to myself. So don't go rifling around in people's underwear drawers. That's my one piece of advice. Figuratively or literally, yes don't belong there and it can be very violating and in the demonic world your you know, ethical violations, you're helping spirits may decide to stop working with you, or leave you for a while leaving you in the dust you know, and they'll usually give you some kind of warning like um, you know, you got to stop this or, you know, I'm not going to give you this information anymore. And so you know, it's important from that perspective as well that but just from a straight up ethical perspective. So I would encourage you, I think, you know, there's so many different ways to do divination and you know if you want to like I love doing pendulum work for yes and no answers and I have located items that I have lost with pendulum obviously I do a lot of divination work in Germany you know, because I'm, you know, Mr. monic practitioner, and that's my forte. But I I like cards cartomancy as well. I've done some things where I have I have a divination bundle, where I, you know, I, I drop the items onto a cloth and then I go into journey and read them while I'm in journey. There's all kinds of ways you can do divination, you can explore it if it's something you're interested in doing. You know, you can, everything from palm reading to Iris reading to. But really, you know, you got to focus on developing, if you want to be good at divination, you have to focus on developing your intuitive skills. Because that's where the rubber hits the road. It's not just about pulling the right card out, it's about how do you relate that card to the person, or to the information or to the question. And that's where that's where your intuition comes in. And that's really, really the, you know, the key to the whole thing, the tools are the tools, there's no there's no magic, there's magic in everything, but there's no special magic in deck of cards. Right? You know, that is mass produced, and, you know, comes here, yes, as you use your cards, you will imbue that you know, if you're reading tarot cards or whatever, you will imbue them with much more of your spiritual energy. And over time, they will become more more useful tools to you you will have, there will be more in sync with you, they will vibrate at a at a at a, you know, in a way that is more akin to your energy. Which is why you don't really want other people reading your cards, because it screws the energy up. And I know people who, you know, smudge their cards or clear their cards, I don't do that a whole lot. But I also don't let people handle my cards a whole lot. Most of my cards, I'm the only person who handles them. You know, if I'm doing a reading for a person, with cards, which isn't very often I will have them split the deck. So it's like one, you know, one touch and that's it, but I don't let people shuffle. I don't let them look through my decks. I don't let them you know, do readings with my decks I don't lend lend my decks out with very rare exceptions, that sort of thing. But again, you know, just to remember that these are, these are tools. And the, the important tool is your mind in your intuition, your intuition feeding, feeding information into your consciousness that you can read and determine and get information from whatever method of whatever method of divination you're using. So with that being said, I will wrap up this, this podcast episode. I love you all.

I hope that you will if you have not subscribed, you can subscribe to this podcast and anywhere you're listening to it. And come to my website and send me a message if you have topics that you're interested in or questions that you would like covered in future episodes. I love to hear from people. And with that, I hope you stay safe and sane and healthy. And I love you all.

Announcer 1:08:40

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

Ep32 The Shaman's Breath

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 0:44

Hello everybody. I have a little bit of a funny story before I get started or as I get started here.

Um, so, you know, I've said before many times that I tend to record these in the morning, I'm a bit of a morning person. But sometimes I get up in the morning and I'm a little foggy, you know, foggy headed, I always have my trusty cup of coffee. As I'm doing these here, I'll, I'll take a sip. Delicious. And, um, so this morning, I got up and I prepared and I you know, I record this through a soundboard and got everything set up and started talking, probably said something brilliant, I don't know. And there was no sound coming out into my headphones that I listened to as I'm recording this. And sure enough, I had plugged the microphone into the wrong thing. So no sound was coming through. So I started over again. normally don't do false starts or any editing or any thing like that. But I figure you probably don't want to listen to you know, an hour of blank air talking into a microphone that's not connected to anything recording. Anyway, podcasts technical issues. I am a technical person, and I'm was before I became a shamanic practitioner. But that doesn't mean I always do things perfectly. Nobody's perfect. And I certainly am a prime example of nobody being perfect. As I speak, my little chipmunk friend is up on my porch in front of me and running around screaming for some food. So I'm going to, after this throw some food out for him because they're getting ready for the winter. Winter is coming to quote, Game of Thrones. I'm in the north eastern part of the United States. I'm in the state of Maine, which is in a region of the Northeast called New England, we are the North Eastern most state of the US. So if you're not in the US, you look or if you're in the US, you don't know where Maine is. If you look at a map, and you follow the Continental part of the United States, all the way up to the upper right hand corner, you'll see Maine, and that's where I am. And I live in the woods. So we have lots of creatures and birds and things. And it's something I love dearly about where I live, love wildlife. Today, I'm going to talk about breath, and breath as a gateway to spirit. And, you know, talk about it from a number of different perspectives, I have a significant amount of experience with breath work, different types of breath work. So I have done pranayama, for example, which is yogic breath work, and I'll talk about that. And I have done breath work through, you know, a few decades of martial arts training. And I have done breath work as a meditation practice of all kinds. And so I do want to talk about that and why breath is important, and how we can have mindful moments using the breath and powerful moments using the breath and all kinds of things. So I hope this will be both interesting and useful to you. You know, one of my things, one of the things that I like to look at when I examine spiritual topics is how they're handled historically, and sort of globally. Right. So I practice shamanism. And you know, I have looked at certainly not every form of shamanism because that would take me an entire lifetime. I'm sure but I have looked at examined, studied, you know, some things more in depth than others different forms of shamanism as they have existed. You know, as we have historical records for some, and we don't have historical records for a lot, but as they're still practice today, I think, you know, I feel personally that having, being well rounded is important to me.

It's, you know, for some practitioners, it's not and there's nothing wrong with that. It's not a criticism. I'm just saying it's, it's personally important to me to understand like, I want to know about the practices of Hawaiian shamanism or shamanism from West Africa or South American shamanism or shamanism from Scandinavia, or, you know, shamanism of the Celts or shamanism in Russia or wherever. Because I, you know, you can, you can learn a lot, it can inform your practice, I'm not stealing anybody's practices, I, you know, I only practice and teach things that have been freely shared with me and have been cleared to teach. Excuse me while I take another sip of coffee, which is, I just love coffee. You know, that being said, I have participated in lots of ceremonies and rituals and things that I would not lead or teach because I don't have, I don't have enough knowledge, and I don't have the connection. And I don't have an authority to do that. So I have participated in Native American pipe ceremonies. And I have participated in sweat lodges. And I've done certain types of shamanic dances from different cultures and done some practices from other shamanic cultures, and I don't teach them because I, you know, I don't have a connection to them. And I'm not about misappropriating culture in any way. But I do find that participating in different things and learning about different things makes me more well rounded. And so when students or clients or or whoever comes to me with questions, I feel like I'm answering them from a more informed perspective. Although very frequently, when I'm working with clients, I am, as we shall say, in spirited or inspired, we're going to talk about that word, spirit and where that comes from. And, you know, that sort of thing. So because we're going to talk about breath, and we have this word, spirit, and you know, all its different forms spiritual and spirituality. And, you know, we can tell that that is related to the, you know, the word inspiration. Right, I'm feeling inspired. And when something is no longer useful, we or or deceased, we might say that that thing or person or living being is expired. And so, the interesting thing here is that the word, the word spirit, comes from the Latin word speeder tos, and spirit tos in Latin, means both spirit and breath. And they are synonymous. Interesting thing, and I'm gonna expand on that a little bit. Right. So to be inspired means to have, you know, to have taken in spirit, but also to have taken in breath. So literally to inspire, to inspire means, you know, means to breathe in. And you know, in one one way in English, you know, English is this language where we have one word that means, you know, hundreds of different things. And if you're not a native English speaker, I apologize on behalf of the people who came up with this crazy thing where we have, you know, single words that mean many, many different things. I talked about the word love in English, which is so weird because it doesn't feel weird to people who are native English speakers, because we just use it. But when you really think about it, I can say, you know, I love The sandwich that I'm eating, and I love my children. And that is not the same thing, I hope, hope you're not eating your children. And I can be in love with a person, you know, romantic love, that's we have to put modifiers on it, you know, I can love my family, I can love my children, I can love my country, you know, have a sense of patriotism.

I can love my community. And these may all be different things. And I know in other languages, you know, I've heard, for example, that Persian has 90 plus words for love, and some other languages are the same. And, and gosh, I love that See, I can love that I can love that fact. And that's not the same thing as loving a cheeseburger or loving my children. So, you know, the word inspired when when somebody is inspired, it means they're, you know, they're motivated, or they're, you know, we could say they're full of spirit. Or, it could mean that, you know, inspiration could also mean I am I have I'm, you know, that the act of breathing in. And expiration is the act of breathing out. Or it's the act of dying, right? Because the idea is that when your breath leaves your body, so does your spirit or your soul becomes detached from your body. So in. In Latin, there's also the word ennemis, where we get the words, Animal, and animate, and animated, and probably a bunch of others. And this is also another word for spirits. But it also can mean breath, or wind or puff of air. So there is there's a link in Latin and thus English, you know, where we have borrowed from that and probably other romance? Well, English is not a romance language, but probably in romance languages, there, there are links as well, between spirit and breath. So then, when I look out at other cultures that I am, you know, that I have at least a passing familiarity with or have even just, you know, read something about. I see the same thing occurring in a lot of places, right. So in Greek, we have the word numa, which is another word for spirit. And numa is where we get lots of things having to do with lungs and breath, pneumonia, for example, or pneumatic or, you know, all kinds of things having to do with air and breath, also having to do with spirit. In Hebrew, and, you know, I will apologize if I am mispronouncing this stuff, as I've explained them a native English speaker. I have limited studies in other languages, we can credit the public school system in the United States with that, I know in other countries, languages, multiple languages are taught in public schools, from a very early age, that is not the case. In most of the United States, we don't start learning languages until way too late, unfortunately. So, you know, in Hebrew, there's the word ruak, which is spirits and also breath. In you know, in Chinese, we have the word Qi or you know, Qi or Chi as some people pronounce it or, and in Japanese, we have Qi, which has to do with spiritual energy, and is very, very associated with breath is where we get the word Qi Gong, which is like, energy work in Chinese. And, you know, Qi is, yes, it's this vital energy that runs to the meridians. It's the thing that acupuncturist effect and martial arts martial artists use it to disrupt to their opponent's bodies and that sort of thing. And so it is the animating factor of the body. It is the thing that keeps processes running. And it is very, very, you know, it's it's complicated because there are different kinds of key there's key That comes from your food, there's key that comes from the air that you breathe. There's key that you can absorb from the universe. So there's different sources, but still, the word is very much associated with breath.

And it's clear to see why that is, right. Because when a person or an animal dies, we stop breathing. Right? You know, modern science has, you know, some different definitions of when somebody is dead, you know, we can check somebody's heart and their heart stops bleeding. And then some minutes after that the brain, the brain dies from lack of oxygen. And we can measure those things. But in ancient times, before we had modern medical equipment, you know, when a body ceased its breath, it was either dead or practicing some very advanced meditative practices. There are, there are some, you know, there are some meditative practices where the breath can be held for extremely long periods of time, or stopped. And there is there's pranayama, which is practice. I can't remember the term for it at this point, which is practice on the breath is held on the exhalation for longer and longer periods of time. And now, there's some scientific research showing why that is how it can have a positive effect on the body. I should say, don't try this. Don't try this on your own. There are, there are implications of breathwork for different types of medical conditions, and I am not a doctor. And so certain things like breath holding exercises can be unsafe for people with certain medical conditions, or if they're pregnant, or if you have medical conditions that you don't know about. So I'm not recommending you just start practicing things. without, you know, checking in checking in with a doctor always do that anyway. But I know that there are breath hold exercises, where you know, we think about holding our breath when you're a kid, and maybe you're swimming you like take a deep breath and hold as much air in your lungs as you can and dive underwater. But there are exercises where you exhale and hold the x exhaled breath for as long as possible. And there's some physiological stuff that happens there. That's pretty cool. having to do with carbon dioxide and vezo dilation and cool things happening. Interesting things happen with this breathwork. So I know, I know, there is, you know, there are Hawaiian systems of breathing. And I know that there is, you know, you know, we hear the word Aloha, which is like, you know, greeting, hello, goodbye. I think it means much more than that. But the hard part is an exhalation and in at least some part of Hawaiian culture that is done, you know, you touch foreheads, and you say Aloha, and you exchange breath. It's a spiritual exchange. So there's an, there's an exchange of breath there. So, so it's very, you know, it's easy to see why from ancient times the breath has been associated with spirit of spirit being the animating part, like, you know, and see the body. What animates the body. Right is are we just a pile of chemicals and electrical impulses that randomly move us around towards food and whatnot. You know, from a materialistic realism, you know, atheistic perspective. Yep, we're a random pile of chemicals that self organizes and uses air and chemical electrical impulses to eat and reproduce and sleep. And you know, that that kind of thing. And, you know, I'm, I won't argue with anybody who takes that perspective. That is your prerogative to believe that is the case. But my experience, my experience is very different. And you know, where you're, I'm not going to discount your experience. I expect my experience not to be discounted, although, you know, people certainly do.

But humans are humans and all all beings are spiritual, and even, you know, the rocks and the rivers and the land. You know, in shamanism, we, shamanism is very animistic. And we see spirit everywhere and in everything. So that means your car has a spirit and your, you know, the picture frame that your picture of your family is, has a spirit and so does the picture. And so their spirit everywhere, and some aspects of spirit have a material world representation. So human beings are one, you know, an example of that we are a spirit. And we have, we also have physical bodies, there are lots of spirits, many more spirits do not have physical bodies than do. So, there's this, you know, there are many, many worlds full of spiritual beings, some of them are close to our physical reality, some of them are quite different than our physical reality. And this is something that is explored by shamans all over the world. And so, you know, not all living, not all living things from a spiritual perspective, brief. From a physical perspective, all living things breathe, they have some sort of, you know, some sort of exchange of, of chemicals, you know, obviously, you know, fish, fish, gather oxygen from the water. From guy like mushrooms, breathe oxygen, and exhale, carbon dioxide. So they're actually closer to animals than plants, even though we might think of them as plants and plants, you know, plants through their cycles, have, you know, breathe in carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygen, that's a very, you know, obviously, incredibly oversimplified explanation of what plants do through photosynthesis and whatnot. So, breath is important as human beings because we can have control over it, and it is a gateway into spirits. So, breath, as you know, is an autonomic nervous system function. Meaning we do not normally have to think about breathing, we do it without thinking it's autonomic, it's, um, you know, will breathe on our own without thinking about it. However, you can actually, you know, you can certainly affect your breath by thinking about it. And it is the easiest autonomic function probably to control just by, you know, control to have volition over. So, for example, I can hold my breath, or I can choose to inhale or exhale, or I can choose how rapidly I'm breathing. And that will have different effects on the left effects on my body will have effects on my mind. And yes, it will have effects on your spirit. And, um, you know, one of one of the things that I like to teach and share with people is that, you know, this view that body and mind are two separate things, and that body, mind and spirit are three separate things, I think, is a bit of a false belief. I understand it's, like, easy to, it makes it easier for us as human beings to categorize things to put things into neat little category categories, right. Um, and so, you know, if, if I were just, you know, looking at a human being, I would say, okay, the mind, the mind is the brain, the brain and the mind are synonymous, and you know, okay, but the brain is part of the body. So the mind is really like the electrical impulses in the brain. And oh, but we have a nervous system, and oh, we have chemicals that affect our consciousness. And, you know, we're inputting data through our sensory organs And oh, by the way, our stomach produces, you know, our gut area produces the serotonin that we use as neurotransmitter and there are neuropeptides throughout our body and, well, we, you know, what we think of as our conscious mind is, you know, sort of located in our prefrontal cortex of our brain. There are a lot of mind processes in fact, the vast majority of mind process processes that we're not conscious of.

right you're probably not conscious of your digestive tract, being regulated or your you know, your your acid base levels of your body or Are your heart rate, it's hard to affect your heart rate with thought there are people can do it, you can practice that. One way to affect your heartbeats. So it's an autonomic function is through your breath, you can take control over that. And so this is a place where mind and body are really connected. Right, I can think, and control my breathing, control my body. Right, and my mind controls my body and all kinds of different ways. So that's, you know, that's sort of One Direction, right? There's the control. And then, you know, sensory input goes in the other direction, I can feel where my body is in space, the position I'm in, I can see things, I can hear things, I can taste and smell things. I have a vestibular system that tells me if I'm off balance, and part of that autonomic like, part of that is relegated to the autonomic system, like my head, I don't have to think about holding my head up straight, it does it on its own. If you ever do, you know, don't, don't, don't do anything I ever talk about in any sort of unsafe way, make sure you are physically, spiritually mentally and emotionally safe at all times. Um, but you know, one thing that is really interesting, because I have trained in martial arts before that I've done training blindfolded, and how much of your balance is affected by your vision. Right, if you if you are a sighted person, now, if you are a person who is visually impaired, your other systems, your vestibular system, and your kinesthetic system will take over. And so you don't have people who are visually impaired falling over most of the time, right. But if you tried to, you know, stand still with your eyes closed, you might have a harder time staying balanced, you don't even really think about it, like you have a natural reflex for your head to become level. Right. So the horizon, if you're looking out at a scene in the horizon, is going to go straight across, that's where we get the word horizontal from. Why because we don't stand on our heads and look at things upside down, or we don't tilt, we don't walk around with our head tilted to the side, most of the time. So there are, you know, there are inroads to the autonomic nervous system. And one of the easiest ones is breath. And so you can affect the body chemistry with the breath, you can affect the heart rate with the breath, the rate of digestion, all kinds of things. And there's whole schools of breath work out there who are dedicated to gaining health through breath or doing spiritual work through breath. I also do not so you know, the difference between mind consciousness and our physical representation, there are like interpenetrating, interconnected, you cannot really separate them out in any deeply meaningful way. I'm sure on the surface, you can. And you know, I don't know how it works in other countries, but I was talking to someone who is a therapist as a mental health therapist, recently, and I said, you know, it's really interesting to me, that in the United States, you know, I can go off for hours on our healthcare system, I will not needless to say, I'm not, I'm not incredibly proud of it. And, you know, the way that we have done things that we have the most costly health care system in the world, and everybody gets health care by buying insurance, and if you can't afford insurance, you know, you're, you're kind of screwed. And even if you can afford insurance, you know, it's, it's only going to cover some of, you know, what can be potentially life altering hospital bills, if you get sick. We do a really poor job of health care in this country. However, one of the things is that we treat mental health different than physical health. When we separate, we separate them out, as you know, like, they're different things.

You know, there's some, there's some, you know, there's some overlap there where you know, you can go to a psychiatrist and you can get prescribed some medication, which will affect your body and hopefully, affect your emotional state or whatever it is, or help you you know, alleviate Some psycho sees or something, you know, there's different different psychiatric medications. So the body and again, there's the body in the mind interacting, and we treat treat them very often as separate things. But your mind can certainly affect your body, your body can certainly affect your mind. And from my perspective, as somebody who does shamanic healing with a lot of clients, the spiritual component of human beings, is also inseparable from the body and the mind. They're, they all interact they all interpenetrates Yes, I mean, you can, you know, through shamanic journeying, or like astral projection or whatever you can separate part of your part of your soul, not the entire thing. It's your entire soul separates from your body, you die. But part of you part of your consciousness splits off and you can experience other things, other realities, that sort of thing. So, these things are connected. And so spiritual disease, spiritual disorder, spiritual fractioning, all kinds of things can certainly cause physical symptoms, can certainly cause mental health symptoms. And this is where this is where I work, I work on the spiritual components of healing with my clients, I do not I'm not a doctor, I'm not a mental health therapist, I'm not qualified to work from that angle. And all my clients who come to me with physical or mental health, and, you know, emotional issues, I always tell them that they need to, you know, the best thing to do is to, to sort of attack the problem from as many different angles as you can. Because we're, you know, we're these overlapping systems, we're systems of systems, right? So, you know, if you are suffering from depression, for example, you know, go to a therapist, but that might not be the only thing you need to do. Like, go talk to your doctor, you might decide to take psychiatric medication, or you might decide to try to do some things physically that have been shown to help alleviate depression, things like exercise and meditation and timeout doors and social connection. And, you know, there's, there's a bunch of things you can do. And, you know, so if somebody came to me with depression, I would you say, okay, you know, are you talking to a therapist? Are you talking to your doctor? Okay, now, let's address the spiritual aspect of depression. And there might be, for example, there might be some soul loss there, or there might be some ancestral healing that needs to take place, or, you know, many, many other things that can happen. So take care of that part. And people can, you know, after a single session, sometimes feel a great deal of relief. And that can fade if they're not taking care of the other parts of themselves. Or continuing to take care of their spirit usually give clients some homework to do, you know, some, some practices that they need to take with them to sort of keep, you know, integrate the healing that's been done. And I really think that that's a key to help. I really think that addressing human beings as holistic systems of systems and looking at the entire person, not just as a machine, as complicated as it might be, but you know, as body mind and spirit. So breath is, breath is an entryway into that, you know, they're breathing, breathing exercises that you can do that can change your consciousness. Right. I'm not going to teach any of them here because most, most really intense breathing exercises really need to be done under supervision and I would caution that I would you know, if you go out and learn to do some intense

you know, some really intense breathing exercises that can for example, cause you to have visions, and some people might say hallucinations, but I'll say visions cause you to have visions or to dissociate, feel separated from your body, or, you know, to facilitate shamanic journey. or that sort of thing. I would urge you not to learn those through self study, go find a qualified teacher to supervise you. And learning that stuff. Because you know, if you don't know what to look out for physiologically that's problematic. And there can be, there can be some negative repercussions you can as you can affect your body positively with the way that you think, and negatively with the way that you think you can affect your body and mind and spirit negatively, by the way you breathe or positively by the way you breathe. You can find breath coaches out there, and you can go to breathwork classes, or you can take a yogic meditation class and learn pranayama you know, safely with an instructor and follow their instructions, the breath is very powerful, very, very powerful. So, in a lot of shamanic work. And this is, you know, currently, because of the pandemic, I am only working with clients remotely over zoom, we tend to have these, you know, Healing Sessions over zoom. And they work just fine. Because there, there is no real difference in time or space with spirit. Spirit is formless, it doesn't have matter. And, you know, physically, time and space are, are intimately linked to matter, right? gravity, gravity, time and space matter, relativity, all of that stuff, which is, you know, I maybe understand a fraction of a percent of, but I know enough to know that. You know, there's things like time dilation, relative to gravity. So Time, Time passes differently in space than it does on Earth. So if you take a clock on earth, and a clock, and you put it in space, at the same time, the clocks are going to be off after a very short period of time, because time, travel is different, you know, try and tie it in the pace of time is different. You know, and that might seem really weird, and it is, but gravity, matter, mass affects time, the flow of time. And space as well, you know, without your time, space and matter are all intimately linked physically. So, because spirit doesn't have matter, it is timeless and spaceless. So I can do a healing for somebody on the other side of the world. And has, you know, it can be just as effective. That being said, there are, there are some advantages to being in the same space and putting hands on a person and having them witnessed the work that I'm doing. And that is, I would argue, primarily psychological. That's not to say that it doesn't make a difference. Because psychology is important. And when I do, you know, when I do zoom sessions, I turned my video on, so I can talk to people and they can see what I'm doing and, you know, that sort of thing. And that that does make a difference. Because it's going in through their psyche, as well as their, you know, as well as the spiritual work that I'm doing, which can be very subtle, sometimes. Sometimes not so subtle, sometimes people can have these huge shifts. So one of the things that many shamans do in healing is that you will see them blow into the body of the client that they're working with. And this happens in different ways. So in some cultures, they might have a tube or a hollowed out bone that they blow through. In some cultures, they'll take, you know, you'll be lying on a table, and they will, you know, take a little bit of alcohol or something onto their lip and then blow it out over you.

You know, essentially like spreading the blessing out over you. It's not really spitting. It's not really the same thing as spitting on somebody definitely has a very different meaning and a very different spiritual implication. So they will, they will breathe on you and a lot of them that will sort of Like cut their hand into a hollow tube, so like make a very loose fist that they could blow through and blow into different parts of your body, the top of your head, your heart, you know, other parts of your body. And during that time, there's a transfer, there's some sort of transfer. So when I do power animal retrieval, face to face, I wouldn't blow that power animal into the person's body. Or if I'm doing soul retrieval, the soul parts that I bring back, I'm blowing them into the body of the person. Now is that to say that the power animal now lives inside the person's body? No. But we are blowing the energy of that power animal in. So that connection that you know, connection or reconnection is made. And, you know, with soul retrieval, the soul parts that come back that get blown into the body, get reintegrated. So, you know, we blow them into the body, even though spirit is again doesn't really have physical form. You can see you know, sometimes there's spiritual form people can see auras or spiritual doubles or you know etheric bodies, and there's all these different words for them. Um, ultimately, the, you know, the spirit body is formless, you have a soul body that has more of a form and can take on the shape of the person sometimes or, you know, when people talk about shape shifting, really going down the tangent here, you've heard of shape shifting before, you know, with shamans turn into the form of animals or, or what have you. Primarily, what's happening is they are changing their, the part of their soul body that journeys into the shape of an animal, usually an animal. And, you know, taking flight or doing doing whatever, I have not, in fact, personally experienced physical shape shifting. In infinite and expanding universe, anything is possible. But I have never seen witnessed or been able to change shape. Right? I've never seen a person's physical body turn into a raccoon. Um, do I think it's possible? I mean, again, I think anything is possible in an infinite expanding universe. But what I can tell you is that, from my perspective, from my experience, and granted, I've only been on this earth, while I'm coming on 50 years, folks, and that seems like a long time for me. But in the scope of things, in the scope of human existence, that is not very long, in the scope of the the world's existence, that is not a very long time. So but in my experience, shape shifting happens on the level of the soul or astral body. And it is a very frequent practice in many spiritual systems. So in ancient Egyptian practices and practices that sort of Neo, I guess, Neo Egyptian practices, like, you know, the practices of the Golden Dawn, and the Oto, and into some of those organizations that came up, you know, in the past couple of centuries, to teach mysticism and adopted some, some Egyptian stuff. People do what's called assuming God forms. And that means you meant mentally astrally take on the form of the God that you are worshipping. And you know, that the hope the intention there is to be able to commune with that God force and to be able to to be able to I guess, wield the power for lack of a better term of that God if we're doing magical workings, for example, I might

take on the form of Thoth. The, you know, the Ibis headed god of Egypt, who was the God of writing and magic and that sort of thing. So, you know, they'll, they'll, you know, mentally psychically, astral Take on this form of the god they might dress, you know, in, they might dress up in Egyptian garb and take on certain poses and do certain chants and have all kinds of things to sort of, you know, move that along, but I don't think I have never seen anybody actually physically change into the shape of, you know, one of these God forms. Um, you know, and, you know, it's an interesting idea, another another idea that, you know, that comes out of sort of the Western mystery tradition is the, you know, the whole idea of a god form, and that, you know, some of these scholars and, you know, spiritual, you know, spiritually kind of, I'm not gonna use the word enlightened, knowledgeable people. You know, they had the idea that the way to talk about the god form the shape of the God, they really, you know, recognize that these spirits that they recognize as gods were formless because they showed up first of all, they showed up in different forms. Right, so you have Horus in Egypt, who is the hawk headed God, which is some, sometimes he's a he is a hawk, right? So he shapeshifted into different forms. And there is the, the concept in the, in the western mystery tradition of enthroning a god so when we give human beings give form to a God through a statue, or, you know, a mat just imagining the way that God looks or whatever you are providing a throne, a house, a seat, for that God to interact with you. But that is not the true form of the God is that would be incomprehensible. So all the statuary and stuff you see, you know, I don't know how how serve your everyday person believed, like, maybe they believe that's what the gods look like. But there certainly were, you know, spiritual, elite, spiritual, spiritually, knowledge, people who took those forms of the gods as not literal. Right, so formlessness. And I realize I've got way off the path of breath. But I think it's all important as we talk about the formlessness of spirit, and also how it replicates breath, right? Because air doesn't, air doesn't really have a shape, like lick like liquid, it takes the shape of the container that it's in. Right, so when I breathe into my lungs, the air that fills my lungs are basically the shape of my lungs. But it's very hard to understand the shape of air outdoors, for example, right, like weather systems, you know, an air movement, you know, there's a lot of chaos there. Because, you know, we're talking about subatomic particles up to huge hurricanes and weather, you know, giant weather fronts, and that sort of thing. So the level of, you know, air movement, and air temperature, and all of those things, is sometimes a little hard to get a grasp on. And that's why that's why people who predict the weather can be wrong a lot. And you know, computer systems that are very complex and trying to predict the weather can be wrong, you know, some good portion of the time because they're guessing they're using best guess so air and spirit or formless is another connection, and why it's easy to equate air, breathing with spirit. And I do like to look at air, as I've said, as not just air, but breathing air, there is the spiritual component of air, which is you know, you have the elements the traditional elements of earth, air, water and fire. And air is one, you know, air is the dry, cool moving components of, of,

you know, of those elements, and, you know, those are, you know, alchemical elements are, are conceived of as spiritual components that make up not just physical matter, but also parts of the Spirit as well. And so Air and breath. So we'll talk about breathing as an inroads into spiritual work as a as a way to, you know, they're not, they are used as synonyms in many languages. I think, you know, spirit is different than breath. But it is an inroad that's a pathway in it is a spiritual breath can be a spiritual tool, a very powerful spiritual tool for affecting your consciousness for getting in touch with, you know, your higher self, for doing all kinds of work. Because your breathing can affect your body, mind and spirit. And your breathing does, you know, if you're unconscious of it, you're unconsciously affecting your body, mind and spirit with your breath. If you're unconsciously breathing, people, most people tend to over breathe. Most people breathe very shallow, very quickly, and from the upper lobes of their lungs most of the time. And it can feel really weird to take a big full breath. And this isn't to say that full deep, slow breathing is always the way to breathe either, right. But most people, you know, our lung capacity I forget is about seven liters, we'll say. And I can be wrong in that, you feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. And we tend to take in about, you know, a liter or two of breath each time we breathe. So we leave, you know, most of our lung capacity. Over breathing is also a problem if you expel too much carbon dioxide. And you know, most people think of carbon dioxide as waste. But it's not it's physiologically important. The chemical process that strips The, the oxygen molecules off of your hemoglobin in your blood requires carbon dioxide, to release that oxygen, which is why if you hyperventilate, you breathe too fast, you expel carbon dioxide too quickly, you can get faint, and you can pass out and all of those things. And that is in part because your the the chemical process required to remove the oxygen molecules from hemoglobin and give them to your cells isn't happening. And so you need to down regulate your breath. So there's all kinds of different Brecht breath techniques, and they all have different, very different effects on the mind and body. So there's the, the Tibetan practice of trumeau, which is the inner fire, which you know, is amongst other things, a breathing exercise now is more much more than that. You may have heard of this, but people who have trained in this, and in this is a super dangerous practice to just start training on your own. So I don't recommend that at all. You know, if you if it's something you want to learn, go find a, you know, a Tibetan tumo master who will take you on and teach you. But it can actually raise the body temperature. So, you know, monks can go out into the mountains and you know where it's cold and melt the snow around their bodies, or wrap themselves in wet blankets and and dry out the blankets from the heat coming off their bodies.

You know, and that's an interesting physiological effect. I believe that So, and I apologize for not translating this into centigrade, but I live somewhere where we're still using Fahrenheit but so body temperature, normal body temperature is about 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. And they have measured the body temperature of people practicing tumo as up to 117 degrees. Now that is crazy hot. If you were that hot when you arrived at a hospital, they would assume that you're dying of some kind of horrible infection. Like 105 is a you know a really bad fever. Above that is life threatening, but these people practice tumo, they can heat their bodies up to 117 degrees. And not only do they have no ill health effects, but they have tremendous health, good health effects from that, and they can keep warm. But it is it is ultimately a spiritual exercise, even though it strongly affects the body and can be used as a survival technique, if one is caught in the cold and exposed to cold. Imagine being able to prevent hypothermia. Like that, it's pretty amazing stuff. It also shows us what the you know that the human body is capable of amazing things that maybe we haven't even discovered yet. But again, it's that mind body spirit connection. There are certainly Hawaiian breathing practices I have seen. I've seen certainly Native American breathing practices and chanting practices I've seen Intuit chanting that I can tell is stimulating certain types of breathing. I don't know enough about the culture to talk about it too much. But I've seen this sort of chant happening that forces a rapid, a really certain type of rapid breathing. And my thought is that there must be a spiritual component to that. Be very interested in finding out perhaps I should learn predecessors and do some research. So I hope this has been helpful I do, I do like to leave, always leave off with some sort of helpful advice or tip or something along those lines. And I will do that today. You know, but as I said, you know, breathwork can be if practice incorrectly can be dangerous. So don't, don't do anything. Don't do any extreme breathwork without proper instruction and supervision. But I will give you this one tip that you can take with you during your day. And this will help you. If you practice this, it can help you de stress. And this is just the idea of mindful breathing. Now, mindful breathing isn't necessarily about taking control of your breath. This is about taking a few moments in your day, to simply observe your breath. Simply watch your breath without trying to change it. It may change. Because the act of observing anything changes that thing, it may change in a perceptible way, by you observing it, and you know, that's totally fine, be fine with that be fine with whatever your breath is doing. We take a minute or two with eyes closed or eyes open, whichever is safe and comfortable for you. And just watch your breath coming in and out. And if you have difficulty with this, you can focus on the physical sensation of it. A couple of places where you can focus our whatever is the first place in your body, or wherever is the first place in your body that you can feel your breath. Sometimes that's the nostrils, sometimes it's the throat. Sometimes it's the lungs, and you can pay attention to Hey, where is the first place in my body that I feel my breath.

And just, you know, just observe the sensation of breathing. You know, and you can do this little short spurts. And this will help bring your mind into the present moment. It'll help bring you know if you're if you're uncentered you have sort of a scattered soul body, it's like all over the place that will help recenter you can practice this with some grounding exercises. So this is just a little exercise of mindful breathing, which will help to ground and center your spirit and it will help you to calm your body relieve a little bit of stress and you know calm your mind as well center your mind as well. So I hope this has been helpful. I hope it's been interesting. This has been the shamans breath although I've talked about all different you know angles of talking about the breath. If this is interesting to you, and you want to learn In some breath work, I would highly recommend, you know, taking a class and breath work or finding a teacher who teaches breath work and you know, is willing to take that on, or go to, you know, go to a yoga school where they do pranayama. And you can you can ask about that, you know, how much pranayama do you do? You know, there are different types, all different types of yoga, and some of them focus very heavily on pranayama. And some of them, some of them do just a little bit of it. So you can ask. So, that is it for the day. I love you all. Wherever you are in the world, I appreciate you tuning in and spending some time with me, I hope that you will. If you have not already hope that you will subscribe to this podcast, I hope that you will come to my website and follow me on social media and all that sort of thing. I have some cool stuff coming up. Next month, I'm taking part in this big miracles mastermind with about 20 or 30. I don't know how many other teachers, a ton of other teachers, and it's free. There'll be details on my website very soon in the next. And the next few days. Actually, there will be there'll be some details on my website. So follow up there and I am teaching and doing all kinds of things. So check me out. I love to hear from people and we will talk very soon.

Announcer 1:02:07

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

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

Ep31 Ghosts, Hauntings, and Paranormal Activity

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 0:45

Hello everybody.

I'm gonna wish you a good morning as I usually do when I record this in the morning even though you may be listening to this at any time of the day, I don't know, wherever you are in the world.

Today's topic I'm hoping will be a little bit fun and a little bit useful and give you some knowledge and give you some practical things to do as well. But today I'm going to talk about ghosts and hauntings and paranormal activity. Sounds spooky. Um, one of the reasons this topic came up for me is that as I record this, we are going in from summer into fall and a couple of weeks we will be into fall season. Um, where I live in the in the northeast of the United States it's a pretty like it gets very dark very early as it doesn't many northern parts of the world the leaves change color and event ventually fall off and the trees are bare. And of course we have Halloween which is a big holiday here for children to collect candy but amongst other things you know recognized as salan in the Celtic cycle and you know, around the same time as All Souls Day and Dave the dead if you If so, it's it's a time where in many cultures, the veil between worlds gets thinner. And the belief is that spirits of our ancestors can return and have dinner with us and celebrate and that's super common. You know, in Celtic times they would set out feast for ancestors you know, Day of the Dead in Mexico they have the offer and does where they offer up food and you know candles and flowers and things and so it's a time that you know, we associate here with spooky things and scary things and you know, jack o' lanterns which were lit originally to scare off the quote unquote evil spirits while welcoming the lovely spirits in because not all ghosts were scary to to ancient peoples. But we've you know, we've made a whole industry and horror movies and ghost stories and that sort of thing. And you know, depending upon where you are in the world, there are different traditions around this and around that sort of thing but but where I live, Halloween is celebrated. People love to get scared around Halloween, they love to watch horror movies, they dress up in scary ways they have parties if you're not familiar with the tradition of trick or treating, which not not everywhere in the world celebrates children dress up in costumes and go from home to home. And people generally give them candy and things like that. And you know my kids are now getting a little you know, getting too old to trick or treats but think last year might have been their their final year doing that but we'll see. But I used to love taking them out going door to door and people loved seeing the kids and handing them candy. So anyway, we're it's that it's that time of year where I'm going to talk about ghosts and paranormal activity. It may it may pick up if you are living in a culture that believes that you know the veil between worlds is thinner and you know at a specific time or day that you know that it allows spirits to come through more easily. Um, the other reason that I'm talking about this is that paranormal stuff has been coming up for me a lot. I, you know, and I'll tell some stories today, too. I have, I was a guest on a podcast recently, where, you know, I told the story that I'll tell today and this was a paranormal podcast, by the way. And the person said, oh, gosh, that's, that's extremely frightening. And I thought, well, is it? I mean, is it really frightening, I, you know, I didn't find it frightening that there are spirits around.

Um, and doing stuff and, you know, witnessed by, you know, 20 plus people. But, uh, you know, some people still have this fear of Spirit because it's, it's the unknown, it's things we, you know, the invisible things we can't see. From a shamanic perspective, because I practice shamanism. We are constantly surrounded by spirits, you just don't, you know, we don't see them in Normal Reality, like, you know, if you're sitting in a room, somewhere, or, or out in nature, or whatever, you're surrounded by spirits all the time. So having one act up a little bit is not incredibly scary for me. You know, having them having them affect physical reality is still a little bit can be a little bit surprising. Shocking, sometimes. But not like, it doesn't, at this point in my life doesn't make me afraid. Um, so there, you know, I will definitely talk about there's some, there's some paranormal activity happening around me at this moment, and, you know, it's not, it's not frightening me or anything. Sometimes it's a little annoying, sometimes it you know, wakes me up at night, or, you know, wakes up other people or stuff shows up in my house that shouldn't be there or otherwise. So let's talk a little bit about that. I will also talk about some things you can do, if you feel like you have a mischievous or bothersome spirits, around you in your home. Sometimes they gravitate towards homes, sometimes they gravitate towards people. So moving might not help too much. If, if you have a spirit that is following you around. So, you know, it should be fairly obvious from the way that I talk that I do believe in an afterlife. And I do believe in a spirit and soul that is separate, but associated with the body. And you know, at the time of death, the soul separates from the body completely. And we, you know, we pass on because there's nothing, there's nothing animating the body anymore. You know, that's it, you know, that's regardless of the way in which a person actually dies, if they're sick, or you know, injured or what have you. You know, which might be the cause of death, right, the thing that stops you from breathing and you know, your soul can no longer hang on to this body because it's not operating anymore. The soul separates from the body, and that is spiritual death. What I will say in my experience is that for most people, the spirit will hang around on this plane, which in shamanism we call the middle world, which is the spiritual version, or the spiritual overlay of the 3d world that we live in. shamans recognize multiple worlds really infinite levels, but we you know, to really generalize, we talk about upper world lower world and middle world and this isn't Heaven, Hell on Earth. You know, the lower world is not hell in from a shamanic perspective, it's where we do a lot of work, healing work, meat, power animals, that sort of thing. And it's actually pretty beautiful place. It's a very natural kind of place. And then there's the upper world and that's where we meet sort of upper world teachers. And so I, you know, I also I will talk a little bit about my experience of where souls go when people die, right. So, you know, a lot of, you know, systems, religions, spiritual beliefs center around punishment and reward Heaven and Hell, purgatory, you know, all of these things. That's just not reality in my experience, and I won't, are you, I won't argue with your beliefs or my beliefs, you know, you're welcome. You're welcome to them. But I have done a fair amount of work with death and dying. And,

you know, what I've experienced is that people kind of go, because spirit is formless, where you go after you die is formless. But consciousness can represent that as a place and you as having, you know, a body, even though you don't have a physical body. You know, it really differs depending upon the person. And, you know, so your expectations, when you're living towards the end of your life, matter a whole lot to where you wind up. You know, and absolutely, reincarnation is a thing as well. So some people come back, some people do not come back. All kinds of things happen, there's all kinds of crazy things that happen. If you think crazy things happen when you're alive, you should see what happens when you die. So I have, I have on occasion, you know, gone to where people go when when they die in in journey and shamanic journey, gotten information from you know, these spirits that I could not have gotten any other way. So to me, it was really confirmation that I was not making this up. So for example, somebody said, I want you to contact my, my aunt and see how she's doing. And so I journeyed for that person, and went to their aunt in the in, you know, in the afterlife where they were, and, you know, came back and could describe what the aunt looked like described that she was a painter, I didn't know that before he journeyed, that she was visiting, and playing cards, the grandmother so spirits can visit other spirits in the afterlife and have a social life and really have a wonderful life. And, you know, My take is that the whole heaven and hell and purgatory thing is just a method of control as a lot of organized religion is it's a way to control behavior. Right back before we had police departments and things like that, you know, we controlled people's behavior by threatening them with hell and promising them heaven. If they behaved according to our rules. That's my take, you might differ with that. And that's okay. That's totally fine. But obviously, you know, I'm going to present my viewpoint. So, you know, I've done a lot of that work. And I've done a lot of what we call psycho pump work, which is helping spirits move to where they're supposed to be. Psycho pump comes from the Greek and it basically means guide of souls, or, you know, and it's a type of work that a lot of shamanic practitioners do. All over the world. shamans are, you know, work soon, after somebody dies frequently to help them ease the process of crossing over. And, you know, we treat these we treat these spirits as clients, we give them respect and understand that if they're stuck, they're actually suffering. Imagine living in a world where you can't really affect much, and all you can do is observe, you know, over time, that's, you know, that's not fantastic. And so, really, you know, when you cross over, it's a beautiful thing. And you know, you're in it's been, you know, described as a place of just absolute warmth, comfort, love and welcoming. And, you know, I don't at this point, I don't have an opinion about where terrible people go, when they die if they experience a hellish world or who makes that decision or, you know, what have you. You know, I don't know what happened to Hitler, for example, in the afterlife, and I don't have much interest in visiting him. So I'm probably not going to do that. Any, anytime soon out of intellectual curiosity kind of thing. But what happens for most people when they when they cross over is, you know, a lot of stuff gets stripped away that's closely associated with the body, for example, trauma gets stripped away and wounding gets stripped away. And, you know, so people do change. When they cross over, they become more quote unquote, angelic, and,

you know, beneficence. So, some people, when I teach shamanism, we get upper world helping spirits, which sometimes are humans that have crossed over, that come, you know, that want to continue to work with us. Sometimes those are people's ancestors, like a father or grandfather or grandmother who have passed away. And sometimes those people weren't very nice people in their lifetime in in 3d reality, while they were still alive. And that can be a hard, hard truth to except for some people. In the, you know, what I tell people, when that happens is that this is sort of a purified version of that person, right? This is the person like, who all of the cruelty, meanness, narcissism, ego, all of that stuff was stripped away. Some people call that going to spirit school. And so they're coming back as a beneficence being who only has good intentions, and is not cruel or harmful or anything like that anymore. So that's what happens when we cross over. Now, if you haven't crossed over, if you're stuck here, if you're stuck in the middle world, you know, things are a little bit different, because you haven't gone through that process yet. And that's what we call ghosts. Ghosts are generally speaking stuck spirits. There, you know, that being said, there are a lot more spiritual beings in the middle world than just ghosts. In fact, most spirits in the middle world are not, in fact, discarnate human beings. So a lot of the stuff that we experience, if you experienced Paranormal Activity might be nature spirits, or what I call spirits of place. Spirits get a lot of spirits get very strongly associated with a place and that includes buildings like homes, especially if your home has been there for a while, get of house spirits. These were called house demons in Greek times, they had helping spirits that watched over the home and protected the inhabitants and that sort of thing. But, you know, so all you know, but a lot of sort of bothersome paranormal activity can be stuck spirits, because they're trying to like reach through communicate their suffering, you know, sort of desperate for attention. Imagine if you were ignored by the entire planet for, you know, years decades, and couldn't really, you know, had a really hard time affecting physical reality, if you could all of a sudden get the power to get some attention affect physical reality, you might, you might act up a little bit like a child who acts up in a negative way to get attention. spirits can kind of do the same thing. And sometimes it's a cry for help. And I believe that one of the reasons I experienced a significant amount of paranormal activity in my life is that spirits can sense when people have when people can help them. And given that I have training, a lot of training in sort of psychopomp work and have a lot of experience doing that kind of work. I think spirits kind of come knocking on my door when they encounter me. I also think that certain types of activities make people kind of light up on the you know, what you might call the astral plane or the theory plane or you know, other planes and I've done a tremendous amount of spiritual work. Besides shamanism, I've done a lot of ritual work that is designed to sort of affect my aura in sort of protective ways, and you know, to draw luck into have harmonious relationships and that sort of thing. So when you do that, if you do any sort of ritual work, whether that is in doesn't really matter what the tradition is, if it's designed to

affect, energize or change your aura in some way, or your THEARC body or what have you, you're on the astral plane, you know, that's can draw the attention of spirits, and they can kind of act up a little bit. So I will give, I'll give a few examples. So, you know, one of the reasons why I have theorized that there's paranormal activity around me, because of my training and experience is that, you know, things really kind of ticked up for me, when I was going through certain shamanic training with some different teachers that I trained with, you know, I was trained in deep possession work, which is, you know, you might think of the word exorcism, we don't use that word. Because it's much less violent, and we don't treat treat spirits as enemies, would treat them as clients. And so as training and the possession or training and psychopomp, and death and dying work, and had a bunch of really weird paranormal activity, which brings me to my story. So you know, this was a number of years ago, when I was going through an apprenticeship in shamanism and then follow that up with some advanced training in psychopomp, work and curse unraveling and all kinds of stuff. So there was a significant amount of activity around me, and I will describe some of that activity. And some of it is a little bit hard to believe, and I understand that. But, you know, I had some typical stuff going on, like I, my office used to be in the basement of the house that I lived in, and I would be the only person in the house, my kids would be at school, my wife at the time would be traveling, you know, away on business. And I would hear heavy, heavy footprints above me on you know, on the first floor of the building, and I thought somebody had broken into the house. I, you know, ran upstairs, I think I grabbed a stick or something in case there was a burglar in my home. And nothing, nobody, nothing. And that started happening almost every day. And I would, I would come back from a training. And, you know, the woman I was married to at the time, would wake up in the middle of the night and see somebody standing at the foot of our bed. Looking down on us freak out, wake me up. There was nobody there. You know, and some of the stuff, some things a few things you could sort of say, Well, you know, maybe they were maybe they were asleep. And I didn't believe any of this stuff was really happening at first, I should say I was not a strong believer and ghostly activity or paranormal activity. When I started out even though I was training and spirituality. At the time, I thought Most of it was rubbish. And people were experienced, not making things up but experiencing other things that they just hadn't looked into enough to explain. So, you know, the foot, the footsteps, the you know, my wife and my kids, seeing people both seeing strange, you know, shadow people in the house and that sort of thing. And me catching things out of the corner of my eye and doors opening up on their own and, you know, all kinds of stuff. And then it started to really intensify. And it intensified in a really strange way. Things rather large things in my house would disappear. So they would be gone. And they would show up in really weird ways. And it wasn't just at my house. So the first thing was I went to a I went to a training, shamanism training with my teacher. And I have a little bear Totem that I bring with me that I placed on the altar when I do training or when I'm teaching. And I've had it for a long time. You know, it's carved, you know, it's carved in actually carved into a fossil. You know, and it's a it's a precious spirit. Will item to me. And, you know, when I got home that was missing. And I remembered packing it into my bag. So I thought, well, you know, I probably dropped that. So I emailed everybody in the class and said, you know, anybody happened to see or pick up?

My bear Totem, and it looks like this, and I described it, and nobody had seen it. And somebody even volunteered, who lived close to go back to the place where the class was, it was about, you know, a little over an hour from where I lived, go back and look for it. And she did and didn't find it. And I even drove back, you know, with my kids, and with a flashlight searched the driveway area of the building, we were we were training and not to be found. So I thought, well, you know, I dropped it somewhere weird, and maybe it'll show up, and maybe it won't, maybe it's just lost at this point. So about a week later, and at this time I was driving, I was driving a certain car. And we had two cars at the time, I was driving certain car, and I hadn't driven the other car at all. And about a week later, I went to get into the other car. And there was something sitting on the driver's side, seat floor, wrapped up in some papers, and I unwrapped it. And sure enough, it was my bear. And it was wrapped in papers that had printing on them. And I have never seen that in my life. And nobody had been in that car. Since I had been at training, it had been locked in my driveway. Um, so how did it get there? Unknown, Unknown, right? So my laptop disappeared from my desk. I went downstairs to work on my laptop, and it was missing. And it went missing for a couple days. And I was really frustrated. And I was going through. I think it was going through D possession training at the time. And this wasn't the only thing lots and lots of things would disappear in my house and then show up again, in weird ways. And so I, you know, I went upstairs to take a shower one day. And there was a, you know, bookshelf next to the bathroom, master bathroom. And I had I remember placing my hand on top of the bookshelf. And looking at it, and I don't know what I was thinking. But I went in, I took a shower. And I came out and my laptop was sitting right where I had placed my hand and there was nobody else in the house. Um, so how did how did this happen? Well, I'll talk about that in a minute. There's, you know, there's more to the story. So I was, you know, taking my daughters to out to dinner to go get some pizza at a pizza place. And it was summertime. And my daughter was wearing sandals, and she kicked them off in the back of the car. And then when we got to the restaurant, I said, Okay, you know, you know, parked in the parking lot. Nobody got out of the car, the windows weren't open, we had the air conditioner running. And my daughter looks down and says I can't find my sandals. And I was like, well, they must have, they must have gotten under the seat or something. We tore that car apart and never found those sandals. They absolutely disappeared into thin air. There was no way they could have gotten we looked under every seat, we pulled up the rugs. The window had not been open, the doors had not been open. Nothing, they were just gone. just gone, never returned. So you know, so we had to actually drive. Because at least in the United States, I don't know how it is everywhere else, but you can't you can't go into restaurants without shoes on. So we had to go had to run to a store and buy her some sandals. So we can go out to eat. So that happened, you know, these are just a few examples. So a lot of the stuff happened. So I went to this training and was training with this teacher from the west coast and, you know, I was talking to her before the class I'm like, you know, all this stuff is disappearing. And you know, I don't know what's I don't know what's happening. I you know, I don't get it. But, you know, I'm hopefully, you know, it's become kind of an annoyance. You know, I can't have my laptop go missing for three days or, you know, precious spiritual items or my daughter shoes while we're on our way somewhere. So, and this teacher is like, Well, you know, It's really hard for spirits to do that sort of thing. So I think something else is going on, like, somebody in your house is moving your stuff, or you just haven't noticed or whatever. And I thought to myself, okay, well, you know, that might explain some of it, I don't know, I don't know. But it was, you know, things like the examples I've presented over and over and over and over again.

So then, you know, we're the, you know, the class starts and we're in the, in the training, and the teacher is going to demonstrate something to us. So we're, we're all sitting on the floor, in this very tight circle, almost shoulder to shoulder, and all of our things that we bring in, if you ever do training, in shamanism, there's a lot of stuff, you know, you have drums and rattles and stuff like that, all of my stuff is behind me about 10 feet behind me and including my rattle, which is sitting on a cushion. And, you know, the teachers teaching and all of a sudden, the rattle starts to shake itself, and you know, audibly and visibly shake, so you can hear it and see it and there's nothing else, there's no tremor in the room, nobody else's rattle is moving. Nothing else in the room is moving. There's not an earthquake, there's no wind blowing through the room. There was nothing physically touching the rattle that could have been moving it or no physical phenomena that could have been causing that to happen that anybody could observe. The person sitting next to me turned around and saw it, and then looked at me with the widest eyes, and said, and I will paraphrase a little bit here because of the expletive, what the f is that? I'm just like that, or I'm like, Man, it's my rattle shake in itself, don't worry about it. And I think that's funny, right? Like, I actually think some people are frightened by this story. This is a story I told on another podcast. And some people are really frightened by that I wasn't particularly frightened, frightened by it, and annoyed by some of the things that were happening. So finally, this teacher who witnessed the rattle shaking on its own, as did you know, 20 other people in the room, looked at me and said, Okay, I believe that what, you know, I believe what's going on is happening. And so we did a little work in the class, and we did, you know, I did some work on the side to sort of make some peace with make some peace with spirit that was, that was taking moving my stuff, and, you know, sort of found out who, who it was and what was going on. I won't, you know, I won't, I'm not going to talk about who it was or what was going on, not that it wasn't anybody famous or anything like that. But, you know, I'm, I'm respecting my spiritual clients privacy at this point. But, you know, that was spiritual activity, and it did calm down for a while, you know, and a lot, you know, other things happen, you know, certain things will happen around me, like electronic devices will start to fail around me in weird ways, like, you know, my phone will die all of a sudden, or, you know, one of the things that happened during this time was the radio in my car started tuning itself to different stations. And it was it had, this was an older car, and it had a manual dial, and that was actually turning itself to tune to different channels. So the, you know, physical phenomena, electrical phenomena. You know, the, the sounds of the heavy footprints about footsteps above me, all that stuff is going on. You know, and so that's one thing. That's one thing that happened, and, you know, I might attribute some of that to my imagination if it hadn't been witnessed by other people, a lot of other people. And, you know, if it were a couple of incidents, I might say, Okay, well, you know, I don't really know if something's going on, but there's was a lot of incidents a lot, a lot, a lot of incidents, all in a really short period of time, all very similar, you know, and in, in journey, you know, turned out to be a particular spirit, who had some power because to make something disappear, and show up somewhere else. That's not an everyday activity. I can't do that, unless I you know, physically pick it up and carry it somewhere. You know, that is a, you know, it was a spirit who had some skill during his lifetime in spiritual stuff and

could affect figured out how to affect material objects. On the physical plane. So, anyway, yeah, I mean, I tell the story to some people and they're like, Oh, that's, you know, that's really freaky. Well, you know, my friends to me enough now that that story doesn't really freak me out. And, you know, sometimes another thing that's happened happened really weird is, I found things in my house, that don't belong to anybody and didn't have a way of getting into my house. Weird Japanese key chain was on my living room floor the other day, I found a padlock under my bed that didn't belong to anybody. And I don't keep anything under my bed. And I don't have you know, any reason to have a padlock there, and I showed it to everybody who had been in the house, and nobody recognized it, so stuff like that. So let's talk a little bit about what you can do if you have troublesome spirits in your environment. Because I want this to be sort of useful. And this, you know, particularly this will work in you know, home or an office or what have you. So, you know, one of the first things I might do is to try to make peace with the spirits that are there. And the reason is that it might not be a stuck spirit, it might be a nature spirit, or what have you, or an Ancestral Spirit coming back, coming back from across the way. Um, the way to tell if it is a stuck spirit really, is you've got to seek the help of a practitioner who has skill in this area. So you can seek out a shaman, you can seek out a medium, you know, certain people have clairvoyant abilities, they can see, see, or hear or talk to spirits, you know, so you know, you've got to seek out some, somebody who has some skill in that area, it's a little bit hard to differentiate yourself. But the first thing you can do is you can try to make peace. And if you think about it, like any kind of relationship, you know, it's a healthy thing to do in relationships, to set boundaries, right. So if I have a, a relationship, like a romantic relationship with somebody, and something, you know, they, they're, they're doing something that is hurtful to me, you know, I have a right to say, That's hurtful to me, and that's not okay. And then the sort of, but loving way. So the same thing is true for spirits, whether they're in your home or your business, or they're following you around as a person. You know, in my case, because the spirit was active, everywhere I went, it was following myself and another family member around. So and, and actually, you know, sort of feeding off our energy as well. And, and using that energy to affect the physical matter. I won't get into the whole spiritual physics of it, but you know, anything that does anything is energy, right? The ability to do anything is required, you know, requires energy. Energy is the capacity to do work. That's the physics of it. So, you know, one way you can make peace with spirits in your home or business or whatever it is, you can talk to them. Most spirits cannot read your mind. Um, you know, there certainly are spirits that can you might be able to communicate with telepathically, but if it is, you know, a ghost or stuck spirit or, you know, certain nature spirits or whatever. They don't generally read minds, and so you have to actually talk out loud. And that might feel a little bit weird unless you're a person who normally talks to spirits or talks to themselves or what have you. And people might look at you a little weird. So you this might be something you want to do on your own when you're alone.

But one way and this was taught to me by somebody who practices the art of conjurer which is, you know, comes from African American folk magic is to you know, you you sit at table and you light a candle and you have a glass of water next to it and a glass of water is, is a form of offering, it's a form of nourishment, so you're not going to drink the water afterwards. Generally, it's a good idea to dispose of it out side after afterwards, and, you know, like water, a plant with it or something like that. So you light a candle and set a glass of water next to it, and you sit and you just speak to the Spirit. And, you know, introduce yourself. Hi, i'm john, I noticed you're in the house, I noticed you're doing this and that. And, you know, set some boundaries, you know, you're scaring my family. And that's not okay. So, you know, I need you to stop that. Um, you know, and sometimes they will hear you and understand. And that's a good, that's a good starts, right? And if things don't come down, or if they intensify after that really good idea to seek the help of a practitioner who's good at clearing space, or working with nature spirits, or you know, doing psychopomp work. Anybody who's a shamanic practitioner of any kind should be really good at this type of work. So another, you know, another way to sort of make and keep peace with spirits in the home is to, is to make offerings. And I did a whole podcast on offerings before. And the best use of use of offerings is to, you know, to pacify mollify spirits. You know, there's some complexity to that. So I would check out like, if you're, you know, if it's, you know, check out my podcast on offerings or read something about how to give offerings. But basically, if you come from a culture that makes offerings to the dead, do that in the culturally appropriate way that you would do that? You know, so if you're, you know, if you're come from a culture that has an offer ENDA use that if you're from another kind of culture, and you do offerings a different way, do that. Because chances are, that spirit probably associates with the culture that you associate with. Exception might be if you're living somewhere that's not native to you, or, you know, you're living on land, where there are not, you know, your people didn't occupy beforehand. So for example, I live on land that was previously occupied or close to land that was previously occupied by Native American tribe. And so some common offerings might be cornmeal, for example, something that they understand from their lifetime, understand and respect. So I might make an offering of corn meal out on Ivan outdoor altar, on the spirits of the land for the spirits of the land here, which includes, you know, potentially Native American spirits of, you know, a tribe that lived here before my ancestors settled in the area. So, you know, honor respect relationship. So shamanism, which is my path is all about being in relationship to spirits. And, you know, that's a really good way of thinking about it. So, when people sometimes they'll have, they'll need a power animal, some people might kind of think of that as a spirit animal or Totem animal, they're, they're different things. So power animal is a particular animal spirit that works with an individual, where a spirit animal is more like this is an animal I identify with.

You know, a breed of animal or a type of animal or species of animal that I identify with, very strongly identify with the qualities and the totem animal is usually an animal that's associated with a clan or a tribe, you know, that sort of thing. I might belong to the bear clan. And so the totem for my clan is, is bear. But if I have a bear power animal, that is a one on one relationship with a spirit of a bear. So some people get their power animal you know, we do something called power animal retrieval to reentered. Somebody power animals in them. And you know that the, you know, sort of the beginning of a relationship. And some people get an animal that they have a fear of, you know, spider or snake or bat or you know, sometimes crow I love crows. So I don't know why that would be. But I've had people like, crows yuck. And that's not a good way to begin a relationship. Imagine meeting somebody in a dating situation for the first time. And I'm like, oh, yuck. I don't like your kind of people. probably not a good way. Probably not a healthy way to begin a relationship, a strong relationship with somebody, that's not going to do you much good. So, when you think about it that way, entering into relationship with spirit. And so when we do offerings, when we talk to spirits, that sort of thing. It's important to be respectful. And yes, this is, you know, this is my house. And I can assert, you know, I can assert certain rights to my house. But I understand that I'm not the only resident here. And I can assert boundaries, certain types of behavior is not acceptable. Don't wake me up in the middle of the night. I need my beauty rest. You know, don't steal my stuff. I'm happy to give you an offering. But, you know, there are certain behaviors that are that are not going to be okay. Taking in hiding my things, I mean, not okay. Scaring my children. Not, not really okay either. You know, might be unintentional behavior on their part. So you can certainly set boundaries. Now hauntings? You know, hauntings can be in my experience, and I'll talk about sort of why spirits get stuck here in the middle world, and not move on. Um, hauntings can be pretty challenging. So generally speaking, hauntings happen. You know, a stuck spirit is a human being. That, so I'm separating that from activity of other types of spirits, nature, spirits, spirits of place, things we might consider gods and goddesses or helping spirits, we're talking about stuck spirits. And they get stuck for a few different reasons. So these are generally human beings and my experience. Animals don't really become stuck spirits. And there's a couple of reasons for that. So, you know, although people might see ghostly dogs or you know, that sort of thing, I think they're probably nature spirits at that point, I think they're probably not, they're appearing that way. But they're probably not actual dogs that that passed away. We tend not to get, they tend not to get stuck. In my experience, I have not encountered ghost animals. People though. So what happens that causes somebody to be stuck. So this is usually a death, where the death comes as a shock, or a surprise, some sort of traumatic death. Not always, but most of the time. So the things we think about are like, murder and suicide are a good example to that. And I realized that suicide isn't necessarily shocking or surprising.

But it is such it's an act where a person is in such horrible pain to end their life at that point that sometimes they get, sometimes they get stuck. And there's some other stuff that goes on with suicide, you know, with soul loss when one wishes oneself dead or thinks one's better off dead, the soul kind of separates from the body becomes dissociated a little bit and you know, that can cause some pretty severe soul loss and then you know, when, you know when, if somebody, you know, complete suicide and unfortunately dies. They can wind up being stuck here because there's so much soul loss. It is very sad and I really you know, if you, if you in any way ever feel suicidal or like you need help, I hope that you reach out for Have the help that you need? It's not. It's not, it's not a good thing. And it's not necessarily. It's, it's not, it's not an it's really not an answer to anything. And I recognize how much pain people are in when they're when they're going through that, and how crowded are thinking becomes, and the types of thoughts that go through people's heads, I do understand that. So, if you're considering if you ever consider that or you feel that way, or you have thoughts that are overwhelming, and you can't control them, please, please, please reach out for help in your area, call emergency services, or call a suicide hotline, and, and get the help that you need. So murder and suicide are are ways that spirits get stuck here. You know, things like accidents and natural disasters, so car crashes, plane crashes, tsunamis, that sort of thing. Any kind of mass casualty event, you know, could be a fire or, you know, anything like that we're, you know, the death is either violent or surprising or shocking. Um, human spirits can get stuck. And, you know, I have I have theories about that. I don't know 100% why that is. But I think it has, I think it has to do with the shock. And that the the soul, the consciousness is not accepting that it's in fact dead. Or there are other reasons why it gets stuck here. And so these, you know, these spirits get stuck animals don't. Animals don't really have an ego in the same way that people do. I'm not saying that animals are not conscious, and they're not and don't have souls, they are absolutely are conscious, and they absolutely have souls. But they don't get stuck here. And I think it has to do with ego structure. So, you know, it is what it is, I don't, you know, I'm theorizing at this point. But in my experience, animals don't become ghosts and don't become stuck spirits. I could absolutely be wrong on this. But I've run into a lot of spirits. And that hasn't hasn't been an experience of mine. So, you know, so. So these beings can get stuck. And what practitioners who are trained in psychopomp work can do is help them move to where they're supposed to go. And we do that with the help of our helping spirits. And we do that with a full conviction of where they're going next is going to be a wonderful place where they're going to feel at ease, and there will be no suffering. And they're, you know, is going to be a beautiful welcoming place for them, and help them move to that place. It takes a fair amount of training to be able to do that work, I don't recommend that to people who haven't gone through, you know, the stages of training that are required to do that sort of work. So anyway, that's, that's psychopomp work. So you know, if you have if you have a condition like that, you can call in somebody who's helpful at helping souls crossover. And, you know, not just sermonic practitioners can do that. But people who are mediums sometimes can, can do that. I'm not a huge fan of exorcising spirits, that's sort of a combative way of approaching it.

And, you know, again, if it's a suffering spirit, practice, you should treat that as a client the way you would somebody with a body. So, from the shamanic perspective, there are lots and lots of spirits in the world. Some of those spirits have physical form, some of them do not. Right. So when when you when you die, you're not really attached to your physical form anymore. So your your spirit is sort of formless but your consciousness still holds a form for it right? Your soul body still holds a form, which is why when, you know if people see spirits or you know, an ordinary reality, and they're not in trance, they might see them as just shadowy or translucent, or, you know, sort of a morphus foggy balls of light, that sort of thing. And that, you know, is a little bit Spiritual energy bleeding through into the physical realm. And, you know, most spirits can't, can't do that, or requires too much energy to do that, or they don't know how or, or they just don't want to, they just don't have an inclination to take on physical form physical forms hard, you know, I, you know, I've, I've got aches and pains, I'm sure you do, too. I mean, physical bodies hard, it is a blessing, though, it is a blessing to have a physical body to be able to work in this plane. But understanding that there are many, many, many other planes. So it's important to treat your body Well, it's important to take care of it and, and that sort of thing. And I realized, I'm going off on a little bit of a tangent, but that's a normal thing for me. So as we come into the darker months, at least, if you're in the Northern Hemisphere, you know, something to think about. And I, I did another podcast on ancestors, and I did another one on on setting up altars, you know, and having an ancestor altar is another good way to sort of, maybe calm the spirits in your home, because the ancestors will take care of your home and sort of keep things in order, you know, their, their spirits can can cross over, particularly if they're honored here. So, you know, you might, if you again, if you live in a culture where it's traditional, to have an ancestor altar, keep that up. You know, that's a fantastic lineage to have. And if not, you can certainly find ways to keep an ancestor altar could be, you know, photographs and candles, and you make offerings of flowers and that sort of thing. And that can exist in your home, without appearing too shocking to people who are, who might not understand or might be opposed to any sort of spiritual work. Or might think you're worshipping the devil or something, I don't know. I think you know, certain people, when they find out what I do, I think, you know, might might associate what I do with some kind of dark magic or some, you know, something evil or something, and quite the opposite is true, I assure you, but you can keep an ancestor altar that is fairly low key. And my one recommendation for that, if you set up an ancestor altar is to not keep it in a bedroom where people are sleeping, because it can become quite an active location and can kind of mess up your sleep a little bit. So, you know, I keep mine in my dining room where my family eats and where we, you know, use the dining room table to play games and have lots of family activity. And I just consider it like, you know, these are these are deceased people, but they're people that are still part of my family and I'm including them in activities that my children are taking and hopefully they take some joy from that and will in return Watch out for the my children and and watch out for my home and keep us all safe. And that sort of thing. And also maybe kind of keep the spirits a little bit calm around me make sure they're not stealing my stuff. Or, you know, destroying my electronics or you know, waking me up at night.

So with that, I will end this podcast. I hope this has been interesting. I hope I have left you with some useful information. As always, if you have suggestions or things that you're interested in, you can feel free to contact me through my website, which the the URL for is announced at the end of every episode. I hope you'll subscribe via wherever you get podcasts and listen to me some more. I love talking to people all over the world. I love and appreciate you and I hope that you and your loved ones stay healthy and happy and loving

Announcer 1:00:14

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

Ep30 Mental Health and Spirituality - Through the Shamanic Lens

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 0:48

Hello, everybody.

Welcome to the podcast, wherever you are in the world, and whatever time you're listening to this, and I will, I will say good morning. I do this almost every time. Because I record this early in the morning, usually, I'm a morning person. Not everybody is a morning person, but I like to be up before anybody else. You know, the energy for me is clear, there's not so much noise or mental interference or whatever's going on. So if you hear me sipping that's coffee. I am a bit of a coffee aficionado or coffee snob, as some people would call me. I sometimes do drink awful coffee. But when I have no other choice, but I do, I love my coffee. It's definitely a vise that that if I I, I don't think I've ever tried to give it up. I don't know that I would be able to at this point in my life. But I recognize that and I work with it. So today, I'm going to talk about a topic that is extremely important to me and has come up quite a bit in my work lately. And that is the topic of mental health and spirituality and how they interplay. And of course, because I'm a shamanic practitioner, I will talk about these things, through my own lens, right through the lens of shamanism. So I'm not going to talk about mental health from the perspective of Judaism or Buddhism, even though I practice Buddhism. You know, so obviously, my viewpoint is my viewpoint. The other thing I will say is that I am not a doctor or mental health professional. And so I am going to be speaking about mental health from a lay person's perspective. And nothing I say, here should take the place of any, you know, and I would say this to a client that I was working with as well. Nothing I say should replace any sort of professional help you may be getting if you're having questions or issues about mental health. And something I say contradicts something your doctor says, or your therapist or whatever. They're obviously they know you and they are professionals. And they should, you know, what they say should supersede that. And, and, you know, the stuff I'm talking about, this is just my viewpoint, in my opinion. It's not advice in any way, particularly in this podcast, and I, I do have pod, you know, episodes of this podcast, where the things that I say are more practical, they're more, you know, instructive, it's more advice. And though those will always be areas in which I do have expertise. I don't I try my best not to talk about things or give advice on things that I don't know anything about. I think there's too much of that in the world. You have to do spend some time on Facebook. And I have seen people on Facebook, for example, say, Oh, I have this health problem, and they'll you know, post a photograph of, you know, some skin condition or something in there. What is this? And then instantly, you know, 100 people chime in, oh, that's this, that's this, oh, you should do this. You should do this with all this contradictory stuff. And when I see that, I'm like, you should go get that checked out by a doctor and not listen to medical advice from people who are not doctors and But who have no shortages of opinion.

So, with regards to anything related to, you know, health, mental health included, you know, and we in, in the United States anyway, we really artificially divide health and mental health and dental health and vision health, basically, for financial purposes. You know, a lot of insurance companies, we don't have universal health care in the United States, I think that's a shame. Because most, the, you know, the vast majority of developed countries in the world have that. And, you know, 30% of bankruptcies in the United States are, you know, include medical costs, you know, people lose their homes, because they get sick, you know, good, hard working people whose, you know, insurance doesn't cover everything, and particularly during the pandemic, people are, you know, getting getting bills of 10s of 1000s of dollars from hospitals, it's just our, our way of doing things here is insane, and unsustainable. And this is not a political political rant, it's not a political thing at all. And it doesn't have to be, it just doesn't make sense. The way that we have a for for profit healthcare system. And I could rant about that for a long time. And I do have some expertise in, in this, in that, you know, I've, I've, I've looked at these, you know, with with an expert, my, you know, I was married to somebody who's an ex who's an expert in healthcare, and did graduate research in health care systems and that sort of thing. So I'm not an expert, but I've talked to people who are, who are, and none of what we do make sense here anyway. So I'm going to talk about mental health and the intersection with spirituality. And one of the reasons this is so important to me is that I have you know, and I've talked about my own struggles with mental health, I write about them I have written about them extensively. I I've written articles I've had, very recently an article published an interview where I talked about using gratitude to help combat depression. So and, and, you know, talked about the research behind that. But I came into, I've always been a spiritual person. So I would not say that I came into spirituality due to mental health issues. But, you know, sort of later on in my life, I went through a real mental and physical health crisis. And I, you know, didn't know then, but I know now that that would have been considered in many cultures a Shin monic crisis, meaning that it is, kind of it's a initiation, right. And in some cultures, you have to go through a crisis such as that to become a shaman to even start training to be a shaman. And so when I began my path to shamanism, it was part of my quest to regaining mental health, I had had PTSD, undiagnosed for many, many years from childhood trauma, I went through some pretty severe stuff that I won't, I won't describe in this program, because I don't, I'm not that I haven't come to grips with it. I have, I don't want to re traumatize anybody else. And there is, you know, there's this secondary trauma thing that happens. You know, sometimes it happens to me, when I hear stories from clients are or people that I love, about trauma that they've experienced, it's somewhat traumatizing to me because we, as human beings, most of us care about other people. And we can empathize. So I don't want that to happen. And it's not really significant to the conversation other than to say that I experienced fairly significant childhood trauma, um, lived with what I, you know, and it lived with a lot of stuff and I didn't it seemed really normal to me, you know, depression, dissociation, anxiety, flashbacks. I had no idea for most of my life that these things weren't things that most people experience.

And, you know, things kind of came to a head and I went through this, like, you know, really big crisis I lost, I lost a tremendous amount of weight, not in a healthy way. I couldn't eat, couldn't sleep, I was having panic attacks, I was having flashbacks, severe depression, all kinds of stuff going on. It was definitely a real crisis. And all along I have been, for many, many, many years of my life, since a child, really, I have been an avid meditator and meditation, I'm, you know, certified from at least one organization to teach meditation. And it's important part of my life, and I would meditate daily to, to, you know, to sort of help with things to help with the anxiety to help with the depression and everything else that was going on. And that wasn't, it was helping, it was helping, but was too much. There was too much going on for, for just meditation to help that. And one day, I was meditating in my office, and I heard a very, very clear male voice say, you need to go learn shamanism. And this was a weird thing to me, because I knew nothing about shamanism. I didn't understand what that word meant. I had heard the word, you know, I thought of, you know, people in South America or in Asia, you know, Siberia, Mongolia, and Peru. And I thought, how am I going to learn shamanism? Like, how is that going to happen? But the voice is very compelling. And I thought to myself, geez, you know, I don't I live in the state of Maine in the United States. I don't live in Peru. I don't have the resources or the time to travel to Peru and find a teacher. I don't know if they would even take somebody from, you know, the United States as a student, like, how is this going to happen? So as it turns out, where I live, there is a sizable and healthy shamanic community. And there are some amazing teachers here, some of what I would consider the best, best known and, you know, in the world, and some of the best teachers are here. And I found my teacher, and began my journey. And it has really turned my life around changed my life in profound and significant ways. So again, this is not a prescription, if you are suffering from PTSD, I'm not telling you to go out and study shamanism, this just happened to be my path. And it happened to be a path that provided a lot for me, and a lot of support, and a lot of what I needed as well as helping me heal, because it's a very is a healing path as well. And, you know, along the lines, and I went into it, just, I'm going to work on myself, that was my original goal. And I had no inclination to help other people at that time. Really, I was just wrapped up in my own stuff. And and, you know, if I'd even thought about it, I probably would have thought, Well, how can I help other people, I can't even help myself at this point. So over time, you know, over many years of training and and learning everything I could, and taking, you know, Teacher Teacher Training a lot of these things, I found out that I had a penchant for certain types of work. I helped a lot of people with trauma. In the beginning, I think about 100% of 100%, for the first couple of years of practice of my clients had childhood trauma. And it wasn't because I was specifically advertising for that, or whatever, I think there was what we call wound resonance, meaning people could tell that I had been through the same things that they were, you know, similar things that they had been through. So that was, you know, a lot of the clients who came to me came to me with trauma and and I worked with them and you know that there is a shamanic practice for treating trauma. It's called soul retrieval. That being said, I think, I have always been an advocate of

sort of an overkill approach, maybe like doing everything one can to affect one's situation. So if you had a health problem, for example, you know, let's say, let's say you found out you had diabetes, and they put you on prescription, you know, prescriptions for that, you know, maybe you're taking Metformin, maybe you're taking insulin, you know, whatever it was, you know, and that is one angle of attack, right? That's one way of treating affecting this problem. But what they would also recommend for you probably would be exercise and diet changes, right? And that would be, I think, a fantastic idea. Right, let's let's, let's go at this problem from multiple angles and, you know, do do everything you can within reason, too, to help yourself through through a health issue. And so I think the same thing was true for me. Definitely in that camp for mental health. You know, I definitely was talking to therapists I had I never went on medication per se but I was taking supplements prescribed by a naturopath you know, I had some tests done and my, my adrenals were off and my serotonin dopamine were low, and you know, a bunch of stuff was was physically messed up. So worked on straightening that out work, you know, diet, exercise, meditation, shamanic practice, I did everything I could. And I will say that, you know, they will tell you, if you are diagnosed with PTSD, they will say there is no cure for PTSD. And I don't know, what the definition of cure is medically what they would have to happen, for there to be a cure. I will say that I have been living pretty much 100% symptom free for a very long time for many, many years. So I'm, you know, not going to argue with people who know more than I do about medical diagnoses and prognoses, and all of that sort of thing. But what I do want to say is that, I don't think, you know, I want to offer some hope, if you are experiencing trauma symptoms, I don't think they have to be permanent, right. And that's the thing that gave me hope when things have come around again, or, you know, started, you know, went through something else traumatic, and, you know, it sort of revivified a lot of this stuck stuff and had a little bit of soul loss from that and you know, reminding myself, like, Hey, listen, you know, you've got through this before, it's not permanent, you know, if you're feeling some depression, or having flashbacks or whatever, it's not a permanent state, you're not stuck there forever. And I think when I was going through the worst of my, my crisis, that, that thought that this is how my life is gonna be from now on. That thought, was something that happened frequently for me and was really devastating. So, if I can help you in any way today, and you are, you know, struggling in some way, with any kind of mental health disorder, I, you know, I just want you to know that it's not it's not, no state is ever permanent. You can, you know, get treatment, you can work on yourself, there's all kinds of things. So, how this has come into my life and my practice recently? Oh, oh, I'm gonna talk a lot about the word psychosis, which you know, is a, you know, medical term basically for having having a break with reality. And we talk about people having psychotic episodes or being diagnosed with conditions that include psychosis, and all of these things. So having a break from reality having, what we might consider hallucinations and delusions and hallucinations, being having sensory sensing things that aren't real.

You know, seeing things, hearing things that quote unquote, are Real and having delusions like believing having beliefs that things aren't real. So you know, a stereotypical thing, you know, paranoid delusions or you know, people are watching me or you know that that sort of thing. And you know, hallucinations can be anything. Frequently there are auditory, who knows when I was meditating and heard a male voice saying, you need to learn shamanism. I took that as a sign from spirit, it was very compelling. And I followed up on it. And you know, some people would say that that was an auditory hallucination. It's hard. Gosh, it's hard. You know, when I practice something like shamanism, it's hard to draw the line. But I'm gonna, I'm gonna try to do that. And I, you know, I had a conversation with a therapist very recently, basically, you know, talking about how do I do that? How do I talk about mental health and psycho sees when I, you know, I basically, in journey, I'm experiencing an altered state of reality and, you know, seeing things that other people can't see? And how do you like, you know, some people would consider that a hallucination or delusion or what have you. How do I put that in context? So I explained to people, kind of the difference. So I'm going to, I'm going to attempt really strongly to do that today. Because I think, like, it's important to me, and I think it's probably important to others. So, the way that this therapist explained it to me was that the difference, the difference between myself and what I do as a practice and what people are going through who are having, you know, experiencing a psychotic episode is that my work is contained. So when I journey it is intentional. It happens during a set period of time. You know, we'll call this the container. The journey is the container. I purposely alter my consciousness, I, you know, I tend to use drums or rattles. I know what I know what I'm doing, I go into a theta, brainwave state, and, you know, I journey and then when I, when I come back, I'm back. This isn't to say that sometimes I don't see or hear spirits when I'm not journey. But when I do when it happens, and I've seen some weird stuff, I've definitely seen some paranormal stuff. But I always question whether that's actually real, right? So I'm questioning. You know, okay, I saw I saw what appeared to be a woman on my back porch. And when I, you know, I thought it was somebody and when I went around, there was nobody there. Did I actually see that? Well, two other people saw the same thing. Okay, so, you know, and I know that the mind plays tricks on us, like we see faces and all kinds of things, people see faces, and burnt pieces of toast and all kinds of stuff. And that is an effect that the mind does, where it's trying to make sense out of sensory input. So places interpretation on things, but, um, if I experienced some thing that is outside of, you know, sort of normal reality for me, I do test that I do reality testing, like, okay, is this something I've actually experienced? Did anybody else witness it? Or is there another potential explanation? I try to as much as I can take a little bit of a scientific approach. That's not always possible. And so things that I can't explain have not been witnessed by somebody else. And, you know, I take them for Okay, I had, I had an experience and I don't quite know what to make out of it, unless something else comes along to explain it. So, so that's, you know, that's the thing. Um, you know, very recently I have had quite a few people contact me looking for help or,

you know, looking to connect or or what have you, who we would say from, you know, I'm sure that, you know, somebody who was in a profession that was allowed to diagnose people would say that we're having a psychotic episode. That difference being these people are experiencing things that are outside of what we would consider normal reality. They're not at the time on drugs or meditating or doing any sort of shamanic journeying, there's no, there's no container for it, right? This is happening to them all the time, constantly during during their waking time. They're also 100% convinced that all of it is real. Okay, so people who are having, you know, a psychotic episode, think everything that they're seeing or hearing experiencing is 100%. Real. So, you know, one thing you cannot really do with somebody who if you encounter somebody who's having a psychotic episode, you would not tell them that what they're experiencing isn't real, that would be like me telling you that your shoes aren't real, you know, they're on my feet, look at them, I can see them. They're right there. That's the same level of, in my understanding is the same level of reality that these people are are experiencing. And, and it's important, you know, if you encounter somebody like that to be compassionate, and they, the recommendations that I've read, also say do not, don't, don't question their reality, but don't also don't feed into it. And that's a really hard tightrope to walk, it has been for me. And the way that I get around, or the way that I get through that is to talk about how they're feeling about what they're experiencing. So, you know, somebody contacted me, and he sees the people around him as fallen angels who are out to get him and XYZ, and I said, wow, you know, it sounds like you're having some something, you know, your sounds like you're very frightened. So I'm acknowledging how he's feeling. Okay, so I can be empathetic and compassion that way. So, so that, you know, the delusional part is the belief, the delusional part is the what is real? Okay. And that isn't, isn't sort of matching up? So, so the big question becomes, are these people who are having these psychotic breaks having spiritual experiences? that are, you know, somewhat uncontrolled? or whatever? Or is it just stuff their mind is making up? That's a hard question for me to answer. But my take on it is this. I think, people who are, who are going through that are taking in a whole bunch of input, right, just, you know, a whole bunch of input from, you know, non sensory input. So we'll say that, you know, some mechanism has some mechanism of consciousness has gone awry. And the filters that are normally there aren't, and, you know, the, the mind becomes overwhelmed, and tries to make sense out of the input that comes in. And, and so, you know, people see fallen angels and demons, and all kinds of all kinds of things. So some of that input might be from spiritual realms. So people might be operating at a level where they're, you know, perceiving what we might call the middle a world, in which, you know, middle world spirits. When I journey, there are a lot of them, and they come in lots of different forms. And, but they're not, you know, they're not doing a journey. They're not in, it's not in a container, where they're like, okay, I can stop experiencing these things. Now. They can't.

So then, you know, a question was put to me recently, by somebody who is becoming a student of mine who asked me, you know, is it true that in some cultures, you had to have had a psychotic break or something to become a shaman? And that is relatively true. There are you know, there's this idea of the demonic crisis, meaning in some cultures, what we call shamanic cultures that, you know, their cultures were there, you know, there is a role of shaman that is, you know, a historical and ongoing part of the culture to be chosen to, you know, to be initiated into shamanism and to learn from shamanic elders and that sort of thing. One has to have gone through some kind of crisis, and that could be mental health, it could be physical, in some places, you know, getting hit by lightning. You know, there's all kinds, you know, there's all kinds of things, and there are cultures where shamanism is hereditary, there's cultures. So there's different ways of choosing, but, you know, in effect, you had to have gone through, you know, some kind of crisis. So, it leads me to a really important point about spiritual help for mental health issues. So, again, you know, if somebody comes to me, and they have some sort of, you know, severe mental health issue, I'm going to recommend, in fact, I'm probably going to insist that they work. They work with a doctor or, and or therapist first and coordinate with me and I have had, I've had, you know, I've had lots of experiences with clients who are like, you know, asking me, is it okay, if I tell my therapist about you? And I'm like, Well, actually, I think it'd be a really good idea. If you told your therapist about me and the work that we're doing together. And, you know, if there's any way we can coordinate, that would be fantastic. And I've had, you know, met lots of really supportive people in both the medical community and therapeutic community. Lots of people that I have trained with, are, in fact, physicians, which I think is an interesting thing. Not like, it's not contradictory, in my opinion, that these are scientifically minded people with medical training, who are studying a spiritual field. You know, I don't, I don't take contradiction from that it might, on the surface seem contradictory. But these people are healers. And, you know, they recognize, they recognize that this is part of their path, and that people aren't just machines, they're not just collections of biological material that were body, mind and spirit. And so there are multiple, you know, there are multiple dimensions to every human being. So, you know, somebody who's in the midst of a uncontrolled psychotic episode, who would come to me, I would try to help them and steer them towards help. But I wouldn't work with them. demonically and this is not because I am being cruel, or uncaring or on empathetic, I'm absolutely empathetic and compassionate towards people who are suffering in any way. Um, but and, you know, in people have asked, Well, you know, in, in shramana cultures, they would just go to go to a shaman. Absolutely, absolutely, that's true. Because they, you know, for one, they don't have, you know, in some of these cultures, they don't have access to,

to as modern healthcare as we have here. But there's a second part of that in so in, in some of these cultures, and I've read, you know, I've read about instances from, you know, Africa and South and Central America and Asia. Um, you know, Tibet in particular, where, you know, somebody, somebody is going through me experiencing psychosis, you know, maybe they would be diagnosed with schizophrenia, or something by modern doctors, and they're brought to, you know, they're brought to shaman. And what happens sometimes in these cases, is that the person is taken in, they might even move in with a shaman and the shaman works with them, you know, 24 hours a day. Right? And they provide community for them, the community gathers around them. That's that in itself is amazingly healing. And you know, that they're working for long periods of time. 24 hours a day. I I can't, I can't do that for somebody. And even if I could, even if my life we managed it, like we don't live in a culture that supports that. We don't live in a tribal culture where people would gather around like that and work on somebodies, you know, recovery from a crisis. So, while it's true, that shamanic healing has been used for millennia, to treat people going through crises like this, modern shamanism isn't adapted well for that. Right, when I see, clients, it's usually for a couple hours at a time. You know, and not every day. You know, not even usually, once a week, I usually, you know, if I see clients repeatedly, it might be, you know, 356 weeks apart, particularly if they're soul retrieval work going on, and they have time to do that. But also most people have, you know, most people have other lives that they have to attend to, they have bills to pay, we don't live, we live in a society where, you know, you have to have money to, to live. So, um, you know, unfortunately, you know, when people come to me, and they're there, you know, in my opinion, really suffering from a psychotic episode, and they've lost complete touch with reality, and they want help, because they think that Gods and Goddesses and demons and things like that are after them, you know, I have to try to steer them towards competent medical, mental health, help, and, you know, if they can get that, and they can get stabilized, and, you know, I would work with their therapist or their doctor, if, you know, if they can get stabilized and work on some healing with them. Because I think those things can work really well in tandem, but I, above all, do my absolute best to practice impeccable ethics. And it would be unethical for me to take somebody on that I knew would not be helped, and in fact, might be harmed, right? I don't know. I don't know if what I do. And if I do, you know, some sort of spiritual work with somebody, if it's going to make the break worse, the break from reality, I don't know that. And so that concerns me concerns me that about anybody that, you know, I've never left a client worse off than when they came in. And I hope to never ever have that happen. I would feel absolutely terrible. And I would worry that I have violated my sense of ethics in some way. So, you know, again, I'm like, I'm not, I'm not going to work with somebody who refuses to get other help, and who is in a condition that I can't, I can't affect,

I can't affect effectively. And so, so that sort of, you know, that sort of that part of it. You know, that being said, somebody who is experiencing depression or some other things, you know, shamanic healing can can frequently be very helpful for that. I think, and I think it's important to work in tandem with your other with your other professionals, because we, we don't live in a culture where you would move into my move into my home. And I would, you know, we would work together 24 hours a day, to work on whatever was happening. And that does happen still some places in the world. There are, you know, healers, where you go live with them for a period of time, you know, maybe a month or two, maybe longer. But that's not the world that's not the culture that I live in, and my my life and the way that the world is set up around me doesn't can't really affect that. So that sort of on the on the topic of psychosis, and you know, I I've struggled with this for a while because I don't ever want to see judge seem judgmental towards people who are having mental health issues because, you know, first of all, Nobody. Nobody wants that. Nobody is in control of that. I didn't want to have PTSD, I didn't want to experience anxiety and depression. And I, if I could have made it go away, I would. But we have this weird thing, maybe not where you live, but here where we kind of, you know, treat people with mental illness. You know, we kind of stand back from them a little bit, like, there's a lot of weird stigma around mental illness in the United States. And, and, you know, I've seen it in other countries as well. But definitely, in the United States, where I live, there's still stigma around mental health, that's becoming less, you know, and lots of people talk about talking to therapists and stuff, and I think that's healthy. I think, you know, having the conversation, there's, you know, increasing conversation about mental health, I see from athletes and movie stars and stuff. And as much as you know, as much as people look up to those, you know, people in those roles, I guess that, you know, that's a good thing, you know, to bring it to light that people that people look up to everybody, every walk of life, every socio economic status, every level of education, everything, you know, mental illness doesn't discriminate. And so it's, you know, it's really important that we are kind and compassionate, and try to understand, try to understand when somebody is depressed, this was a, this was a big one for me. Um, you know, and I experienced depression as a result of my PTSD. And there was all kinds of messages out there, that is, like, you know, a while if you're feeling depressed, just take a walk in the woods. And walk in the woods is helpful, but it didn't. It didn't cure me, it didn't solve my problem. And, you know, some people when you describe or say, you know, I feeling depressed, or I have depression, or like, Well, you know, what do you have to be depressed about? And the answer to that is, there does not have to be a mean, that doesn't have to be a reason for someone to be depressed. Yes, you can have a depressed mood for a reason I, you know, depression can be part of the grieving process, right. So somebody close to me dies, I get very sad about that. And that's a reason. But that's not how depression works.

Yes, depression will lead to thoughts. So you know, what happens, at least from my perspective, is, you have these horrible feelings, there's more to depression than feeling sad, trust me, there are it is sometimes physically painful. You can somebody with severe depression, you can draw their blood, and they will have the same inflammatory markers in their blood as somebody with the flu. So think about how you felt when you've had the flu. Pretty darn lousy, right? You don't want to get out of bed, you feel weak, you don't want to move, you can't think straight. So besides being incredibly sad, or having very low mood, or having no emotion, which is you know, can happen as well, having really flat level of emotion. Depression actually hurts sometimes. And it is in it makes you weak, and it makes you not able to sleep and it makes you all kinds of things. It can make you gain and lose weight. I lost an interesting note, I lost 60 pounds and not on a very healthy way. And I really didn't have any more to lose. My doctors were concerned about my health. I just couldn't, I couldn't eat my appetite was gone. Very similar to if you've ever been really sick with the flu. Excuse me, and you don't feel like eating. So yeah, so I, you know, I took I took some supplements and tried to help with that. So there's a physical aspect as well. So you know, the things that are people like, Well, what do you have to be depressed about or, you know, just don't feel sad anymore, or you know, whatever. You know, if people with severe depression could choose not to be depressed. They would trust me on that nearly 100% of the time, it is not a choice in the same exact way that people with cancer, do not choose to have cancer. If they chose, if they could choose not to have cancer, they would, nobody would choose to have cancer, nobody chooses to have depression. Trust me it is it is sometimes suffering to magnet, if you've never experienced it before, you know, good, that's good. But if you've ever experienced severe depression, it is like nothing else it is it is just suffering. And so we need to have compassion for people who are suffering, because they're human beings, and they deserve it and they deserve. It does not matter what your diagnosis with anything, is, or if you have no diagnosis, as a human being, you deserve love, you deserve more love, not less. And so sometimes, in some places, the way we treat people who are suffering with mental health issues, is extremely inhumane. And we don't have to go very far back in history to see that and we don't have to go. We don't have to go back at all, you know, we can see, you know, people, people living on the streets, you know, and there was a study at one point, I don't know, back in the late 90s, early 2000s, that at least 25% of people living on the street, people with, you know, who are homeless, had diagnosed mental health problems. A good portion of them probably had undiagnosed mental health problems, which were not made better by being homeless, certainly exacerbated. We also know stuff happens. And we tend to put a lot of people with mental health issues in jail in prison. Because sometimes there is criminal behavior, although I will say this, that most criminal behavior is not committed by people with a mental health issue. That's another thing and people, people who are, you know, schizophrenic, or depressed or have anxiety or whatever, are not more likely to commit violence against other people. So sometimes there's this fear that people who are quote unquote, crazy and I realized that is a hateful term, but I'm using it

in that context here, like people who say these things are our misunderstanding and being cruel and bigoted. So people who are suffering and create, you know, people who are crazy, are likely to, you know, be dangerous and hurt them. The The opposite is the truth is the truth, people with mental health conditions are actually more likely to be victims of violence, than to be perpetrators. Because we don't, you know, we don't protect, we don't protect people, and they very often become marginalized, and don't receive the help that they need and are in a you know, in, in precarious positions, you know, where they can be abused, and, you know, that sort of thing. So, as spiritual people, it behooves us to be the, to be the example of people of how people are to be treated in the world. And, you know, the golden rule, whether you are a Christian or Buddhist or something else. That, you know, the golden rule is, you know, treat other people as you yourself would want to be treated. Would you want people to marginalize you or make up stories about you about what you know, your or not give you help if you were suffering and needed it. And so that applies, you know, that applies and being being spiritual, that should apply even more because you should realize the reality of that should realize that we're all connected. And, you know, the way that we treat everyone, you know, comes back to us because we're connected. So it's really important to take these things into consideration. So, I'm not going to have you know, normally when I do these passes, broadcast, I may wrap up with some really specific recommendations about things you can do. You know, when I talked about ancestors, ancestral spirits recently, you know, I talked about things like you might set up an altar or, you know, that sort of thing. So I'm not going to offer some really concrete advice today. And the reason is, as I outlined in the beginning, you know, I don't know, if you're listening to this, and you have some sort of diagnosis, or, you know, somebody who has some sort of diagnosis. You know, that's not something I can, I don't know, and I can't give you some general advice about that. I will say this, though, if you, you know, I think pursuing spirituality, along in whatever form that takes for you, along with the other things that you can do to ensure your health helps to create a more rounded healing experience, and can be very healing. I do think that if you are suffering from a break with reality, that you should be careful about the types of things, the type of things and information that you consume. So the person I spoke to recently, who was seeing fallen angels everywhere, had, you know, was, I'm sure, in the middle of a psychotic episode, he went to bed one night with, you know, movies about fallen angels playing on his TV. And he woke up the next morning, and all he was seeing was fallen angels. So I be super careful about that sort of thing. You know, the problem is, again, the delusional part of the of psychosis is that you believe that all of these things are real. As much as if you're not, you know, you know, I'm sitting, I'm sitting at a table, and I'm not going to table and this feels real to me, and I can see it. And I believe this table is real and exists in 3d reality. That is as real as the things that, you know, things that people are experiencing. In psychosis, right. So,

how, you know, how does that how does that play? You know, how do you know, so the trouble is, people believe this stuff is real, so they don't think they necessarily need help with mental health of their suffering. So they might, might reach out, but they might reach out to somebody like me, and I will always try to steer them towards mental health help, and I hope other spiritual practitioners would do the same. Um, you know, it doesn't matter what you practice, if it's, you know, Reiki or some other form, you know, some energy healing or some sort of other spiritual healing, do the right thing, please, you know, steer these people towards resources that can get them stabilized, in, you know, into, into reality. And then then work with them, you know, work with them on healing the suffering, after, you know, after you get that, help them get some help. And, you know, most of the time, people are not going to want to hear that they're not going to want to hear, but, you know, the hear that they need some help, you know, in the vast majority of the people who contact me, in cases like this, you know, I'll ask them, How do you have any mental health diagnosis? Are you on any medication, they will very frequently tell me I was on anti psychotic medication and it made me feel bad, so I stopped taking it. So it is really hard to convince, convince somebody who, who is, you know, who's going through that, who has experienced, who has been on medication and made the conscious decision to stop because it was making them feel so bad. To go back and seek some help and help and get stabilized. But you have to try. We have to do what we can. Because it's, you know, if you're not, if you're not working to heal people and help people in the in the best possible way, then, you know, in a way that's best for them regardless of your personal prejudices or need to earn money or any Anything else, then you're not being ethical, in my opinion. And I would say, most, you know, most, if not all spiritual practice that are practitioners I know are extremely ethical. I've only run across a couple of cases where I felt people had overstepped a little bit. not consciously, ever. I haven't run into that, where somebody has been like, Oh, I'm gonna take this person for a ride, but that is out there. Certainly. Certainly, it's out there that, you know, there are people who are looking to take advantage of other people. Fortunately, nobody who is who is my friend, or they wouldn't be my friend. Um, but yeah, I mean, I take ethics, extremely important. And, you know, the people that I have learned from so my, my, my main teacher, especially if she got wind, she, she got wind one time that somebody had talked to me about teaching a specific class, and there was a misunderstanding about it, there's a misunderstanding on my part, for sure, and I thought they were asking for one thing. And they were asking for something else that I would not that I would not have agreed to not have taught, and she got wind of it. And she, she got in touch with me immediately. And she said, Well, you know, this person, you know, expects to learn this from you. And I Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. Okay, I'm sorry. So, um, so my teacher, and then her, you know, in her teacher before her, you know, really just call people to the mat for ethical reasons. And when I teach, I always talk a lot about ethics. And, you know, there's specific, you know, there's specific ethical rules in shamanism that aren't really rules, but ethical guidelines that I follow that I teach as well. Things like I don't work on people without their permission.

With very rare exceptions to that exceptions would be somebody, you know, actually physically unconscious, like in a coma or something. And cannot, cannot consent to something. But consent, super important. And, again, like, even if I thought, somebody, if somebody was conscious, and having a mental health crisis, and I felt like, you know, somebody might think that they are not in a condition to give consent, I probably still would not work with that person. And just too close to the ethical boundaries for me, so I keep very, I keep very tight boundaries around what I do the work that I'll do, I don't, I won't take on work that I don't have an affinity or skill for, you know, so, you know, this is a little off topic. But, you know, for example, I absolutely love and adore animals, I love wildlife, I love pets, but I don't do animal work. I'm it's not a skill that I have. And I have other you know, there are other people I know, who are fantastic with doing work on animals. And I have assisted people who are working on animals. But if somebody came to me and said, You know, I want you to do can you do a healing on my dog? Who is, you know, going through some stuff or whatever, um, I would not, I would say, you know, thank you for contacting me, I don't do that type of work. But I would be very happy to refer you to somebody who does and who I think is a fantastic practitioner. So there's another, you know, another piece of ethics is not to go beyond it, have a reasonable, have a reasonable idea about what you can do. And don't go beyond that in a way that somebody could be, you know, paying for something or losing time or what, you know, what have you. So, you know, if a friend came to me and said, Hey, you know, do you think you could work on my dog? And it wasn't sort of, like, you know, you know, I might say something like, it's not really my work, I could try it, you know, that sort of thing. I might still not even in that circumstance, but in a professional setting, I would not, I would not work beyond my skill. So you know, I'm just speaking to practitioners out there if you're listening to this and your practitioner really tried to work with people ball and have them. Get the professional, you know, whatever you feel of the medical establishment, try to get them the professional help they need from licensed professionals. Even if you could, you know, can't decide to continue to work with them work in tandem. And you know, you'll find that there are, there are doctors and therapists and nurses and nurse practitioners out there who are very open to energy healing and shamanic healing, and all of that sort of thing. So with that, I'm going to wrap up for the day. I hope this has been helpful. And I would encourage you, if you are, you know, if you are somebody who is suffering from any sort of mental health disorder, you know, please reach out for help, please get the help that you need. It is out there it can be challenging to find but it is completely worth it. And, you know, it's worth it to get better and you deserve. You know, you deserve to feel joy. You deserve every bit of love and compassion in the world. Just from the sheer fact that you exist, you deserve all of that. So look out for yourselves. I love you all. And I will talk to you next time.

Announcer 1:02:01

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 ma i n e. s haman.com

Ep29 Ancestral Spirits

Announcer 0:28

Hello, and welcome to speaking spirit where we talk about all things spiritual. Your host, john Moore is a shamanic practitioner and spiritual teacher. And now here's john.

John Moore 0:47

Hello, everybody. Hello, hello, hello. And you know, it's funny I usually I usually greet, begin these things with good morning because I'm usually 100% of the time recording these in the morning but it is not morning today

I decided to do this one I was traveling a little bit not too far, but I'm traveling to the next state over with my my children and my girlfriend this morning and just got home. And you know, I've been wanting to do this podcast for a couple of days and have just been busy with clients and life and everything else that happens to busy shamanic practitioners, life happens, stuff happens, you know that that kind of thing. I want to welcome you, wherever you are in the world. Whatever time of day, you're listening to this, whenever you're listening to this, it might be, I don't know, 10 years after, after I record it. If

you know, if podcasts still exists in the internet still exists. Or maybe we're all communicating telepathically by that period of time, when that'd be neat. If you could just tune into a telepathic top podcast anytime a day. But for now, I will use contemporary electronics to come to compile these and record them and distribute them. I've been thinking about today's topic for a little bit, it's come up a lot lately, and it's interesting to me. I always try to pay attention when things sort of come up in my life, repeatedly in interesting ways. And, you know, and one of the ways that that has happened, it was interesting, you know, in in spending some time with my my girlfriend of my kids and her daughter today we kept running into we're not running into but we kept seeing orange cars, which are a little bit unusual, but many, many places and like fancy orange cars like classic orange cars and way more than we usually would. We kept seeing octopuses we saw we went to one place and there was you know an image of an octopus and another place and there was an octopus necklace and then walked into a bookstore today and first book on the shelf is a is a you know, has a picture of an octopus on the cover and is a book about art. So you know that happened about 10 times today. And then we kept running into the the image of mushrooms. Specifically fly a garlic mushrooms which are you know, grow around the world are psychedelic and used by shamans in different cultures, particularly in the Sami culture uses them in in ritual journeys. And so it's just interesting that those three things kept coming up for us all day today, while we were together. And I pay attention to those things because they're they're odd occurrences. My take on them as a shamanic practitioner are, is that spirits trying to put something in our path? And so for the past, I don't know a couple weeks, lots of stuff about ancestors and ancestor spirits have has come up for me. You know, I, you know, I have had a couple of clients raise the issue of ancestor stuff with me. I had a you know, one of them at the time, I had a book on ancestor worship sitting on my desk. You know, at the same time, this client brought it up to me. And then you know, it's come up in lots of different ways. And then the other night I was with my my girlfriend and her family and they decided to watch The Disney movie Coco. And if you haven't seen that movie, I happen to like it a whole lot. I think it is a really well done movie. You know, it is if you're not familiar, it centers around this family during the day of the dead, the Mexican Day of the Dead, where they, you know, they do this ancestor worship they have a friend does, which are, you know, these altars to worship ancestors. And on Day of the Dead, the ancestors can cross over and have a meal with the family and, you know, and that sort of thing. So, ancestors have come up a lot for me, oh, I will, I will also add that I've been doing it, you know, a couple weeks ago, so I am,

you know, a good portion of my ancestry comes from Scotland, and there was a, you know, there was a Scottish festival here in my state and I went, and, you know, the first it was the first time I'd ever been, that the clan that my family belongs to was represented there. And so I got to talk to somebody who represented Mike, my Scottish clan, um, you know, and then, you know, got into doing some DNA research for my girlfriend who's Scottish and, and getting some answers. So many, many, many things have happened, I'm only mentioning a few of them, that have had ancestors on my mind. So I felt like, today, I should take the time and do a podcast about ancestors and why they're important. From a spiritual perspective, again, I'll be talking through the demonic lens, because shamanism is my path and my practice, and I will do my best to speak in a way that respects other cultures. So if you come from a culture where ancestor worship is a thing, and I miss speak about that, I apologize in advance and just take it as my ignorance and no offense meant, I absolutely respect your practices, beliefs and views, even if I don't know what they are, I would love to learn more, lots, lots more about different cultures, I am just absolutely fascinated by different cultures and how they deal with things like death and ancestors. And, you know, in the culture that is predominant where I live, sort of, you know, I don't know what would say white, European American culture. You know, ancestors are not worshipped, we sometimes do things like put flowers on the graves of loved ones, you know, and keep photos around the house of loved ones, but we don't have altars to ancestors, we don't do ceremony with them, we don't have special meals with them. We don't have special days that we celebrate them, unless you, you know, somehow celebrate Day of the Dead, you know, you somehow that survived to to where you are. So, you know that, and that's my, that's my culture. And and that is not the culture, that is not the only culture in the US. United States is very multicultural, right? Obviously, we have a very large Latino population, and many of those people are from Mexico, and they bring their customs with them. And we have people who may come from Africa, and we have people may come from Asia and, and other countries in Europe, that ancestor worship is still practiced, and still a, you know, an important part of their life. But just speaking from my culture, and the way that I grew up, we don't do that, in general, and death is, you know, death. So I'm talking about ancestors, you know, and I'll go through what I mean and how, and I'm going to try to expand your idea of what ancestors are, as well, a little bit, but, you know, generally we're talking about people who are deceased, that are in your bloodline, generally speaking. But we'll go a little bit beyond that today, as well, in talking about who ancestors are. I'm also going to talk about why we might want to put some efforts some thought into ancestor worship or ancestral healing or being in touch with our ancestry. I'm going to talk about the drawbacks. I'm going to talk about ancestral wounding, which is a thing and I'm you know, talk we'll talk about How do you handle it? If you have ancestry, you know, people in your ancestral line that you're not necessarily proud of? Right? How do we deal with that? How, for example, maybe you have ancestors who were, I don't know, slave owners, or murderers or, you know, participated in genocide or something along those lines, I'm going to talk about that, today. And how, you know, understanding that as is still important, and how we are the legacy of our, of our ancestors.

So, let me begin, and I want to talk about you talk about you as an individual. And, you know, the same goes for me as an individual and everybody else who's who's an individual. And, you know, I like to have, you know, people I work with students or clients, what have you, I like to have them consider what an absolute miracle it is that, that, and I'd like you to do the same today. Just consider for a second, what an absolute miracle it is, from, even from a statistical standpoint, that you even exist today. Right? What had what things had to happen for you to exist in this body, as a spirit with a soul, all of these components, what things what astronomically improbable, things had to happen. You know, in hitting that in very broad terms, you know, the universe had to exist had to begin to exist, right, there was a big bang, we can argue whether or not that was kicked off by divinity, or, you know, the universe was created. whole cloth, I don't believe those things, I do think that there is always divinity in play. Um, and then imagine if any of the physical laws of the universe that we exist in, were slightly different. So for example, if, you know, the force of gravity were slightly different, or the force of you know, the, the force that binds the nuclei of atoms together was slightly different, like, the physical reality, we, we know, wouldn't even exist. Right. So it's, it's, you know, it is an absolute, you know, improbably bility to the infinite degree, that physical reality as we know it exists. So then what has to happen, right, so the universe gets created, and it's just a bunch of helium or hydrogen, such as a bunch of hydrogen, sorry. And then you know, the hydrogen kind of gets together and form stars, and all of the elements that we know, all the elements that we that are created are created in the, you know, the, these furnaces that are stars, so the carbon in our bodies, the nitrogen, that an oxygen that we breathe, everything, every element that we rely on to live was born in the belly of a star at some point. And that's pretty amazing when you think about it. So then, let's take life life on Earth, right? So we are, you know, we have DNA, this double helix of DNA that you know, and, and all life as we know it on earth is is DNA based. And if you took the, you know, I forgot if you took these strands of DNA that are coiled up in every cell in your body, and you stretch them out, and they'd be several meters long, and they contain so much information. And, you know, I think it was, I think it was Crick, one of the discoverers of DNA, who said something along the lines of four for light for DNA based life to form on Earth, the odds against that, the odds of that happening, are the same as a hurricane blowing through a junkyard, and assembling a fully functional 747. Like DNA base life is so improbable, and I forget their actual calculations about things like how hard it would be for like, if you had all The chemicals you needed to put together like the simplest protein that makes up the human body. how, you know, the odds of that forming an actual, the simplest protein that we use are, you know, one to a number that's greater than all of the star, you know, all of the stars in the known universe. So to me, there is some guidance, there's some engineering going on. And I realized that is a controversial topic.

from both sides, right, people think the universe was some people think the universe was created in 6000 years ago, and boom, here it exists. And some people think everything we are is a complete and utter accident and things just happened. I personally don't think either one of those things is accurate or could could be true. Neither one of those things makes sense to me, when I really think about it, when I examine it, and yes, while I am a spiritual person, and a shamanic healer, and a teacher, and I have, you know, paranormal experiences, and, you know, I travel in spirit when I'm doing shamanic journeying, and all of these things, and they talk whispers, all the things, I'm also relatively scientifically minded. Um, and I worked in the scientific field for over 20 years of my life. So I do have, you know, I do have a background in the sciences and math and all of those things. And I'm, you know, I am not a quantum physicist, or a geneticist, or any of those things. So those people know way more than I do. But everything I know, points to this being, you know, the fact that life even exists in the way it does, is quite a quite a miracle. So then for you to exist, you know, so life had to spring up, and, you know, probably, you know, single celled organisms, and then maybe funguses, and then, you know, animal life is, is very recent plant life has happened, you know, well, well before animal life sprung up. And then, you know, very simple animals, and then, you know, jumping forward, you know, fishes and sharks and dinosaurs and turtles and snakes and birds, and then mammals, and, you know, then primates, and then of all the primate families that we're finding existed from, you know, Neanderthals to Australopithecus to everything else. homosapiens is the only one that still exists, they all died out. They all died out 1000s and 1000s of years ago. So the human family that we belong to, is the only one that exists. And that fact that very fact should bring us together more, I think, right? We are, we are all the same family. We all have a common ancestor. You know, we all have, we all have a, you know, a woman who gave birth to our ancestors. You know, and if it weren't for her, none of us would exist. So we are all family. We're all brothers and sisters, maybe distant relationships, but we're all brothers and sisters. We're all family at a genetic level at a soul level. All of these things are true. So human life, okay. Huge, huge improbability. We've gotten through many, many levels of improbability, and by the way, you know 15 billion years is the estimated age of the universe. And that might seem like a really long time. But if you think about everything that had to happen, you know, when the odds against it happening and you know, the earth forming in a habitable zone with liquid water and all of these things. Although we know we're finding more and more planets, lots of planets around stars, it seems to be the norm and lots of them. Maybe in an area where liquid water can exist. And I imagine there's life. Lots and lots of places out there in the universe. I think the odds are that there just has to be. And also everywhere we look on the planets, we find life, you know, we look in these volcanic vents and there's microorganisms there that can survive, you know, boiling water and you know, just crazy things that we can't you know, we we can hardly conceive of that could support life we're finding life everywhere we look and you know, we find these these creatures These tardigrades, right, these little tiny, microscopic water bears that can survive the vacuum of space. unprotected, that's crazy. And, you know, there's some experiments that sent, you know, sent probes up into, you know, up above,

I'm going to probably describe this somewhat wrong. So forgive me, that sent probes either, like really, you know, balloons that could reach outside the area where microbes and things could exist, and found evidence of life, you know, in basically in space on the edge of space, and forms that, you know, in compositions and forms that we don't experience on the ground. So life everywhere, but human life, you know, one species, still existing after, you know, 4 billion years of the earth existing. And far less than that, where we're life actually sprung up on earth. And so even with human life, think about yourself as an individual, like, how many ancestors do you have? Going back? Let's say that the first homosapien woman who gave birth to human children, you know, what we consider human today was, I don't know, a million years ago, 2 million years ago, 3 million years ago. You know, I don't know if we know quite yet. We have estimates. How many generations back is that 100,000 generations? Do you know how many ancestors you have had in 100,000 generations. So many, right, obviously, way more than 100,000. So I like to picture each individual person as like the end of this giant funnel. All of these people funneling their genetic material, their their spiritual energy, their genetic memory, down into you as an individual. And for that to happen, all of these people needed to live long enough to have children. And that was not such an easy thing. For most of human history. most of human history was subsistence hunting, subsistence agriculture, not that long ago, actually, you know, 1010 20,000 years ago, hunter gatherer lifestyle, no modern medicine, no, you know, anything. So, you know, probably huge infant mortality rate. Even, you know, even a couple 100 years ago, the number one cause of death for women was childbirth. That means most women died giving birth to children. So the fact that all of your ancestors who survived long enough to have children actually survived long enough to have children, the odds against that are astronomical as well. All of that funnels down into you as an individual. And if you just take some time to think about that, and you think about what an absolute miracle it is, that you actually exist, listening to this podcast today, it's mine, it should be mind boggling. I hope it is a little bit, I hope, because what I really want you to take away from this is just an appreciation for how unique and special and what a miracle you are. And, you know, hold that hold that understanding. Think about it when you can. So many of us have suffer from low self esteem. And, you know, there's a lot of societal reasons for that. You know, society likes to knock us down a peg, keep us in order, keep us in our place. Tell us that we're not special. You know, there's billions of people on this planet and you're just one of them and you don't deserve whatever you're undeserving. And pardon my pardon my language, but that's horseshit. You're absolutely unique, special and unbelievable miracle that you just the act of existing. And I hope that you'll take that to heart at least somewhat. And and take that in and understand that So, you know, I've talked, talked a little bit in of ancestors and how that how this sort of filters down into you, right? Like how you're the product of, you know, people that survived great hardship,

and famine and war and doesn't matter where you come from. At some point in time, your ancestors survived a lot, a lot of stuff. Here is another thing that has brought ancestors to, to my mind. Right, a thing that has made me think about ancestors a little bit. So Tomorrow is my maternal grandmother's birthday. My maternal grandmother is turning 105 tomorrow. And that, in itself is a pretty amazing fact she is still alive, she's still absolutely with it. She lives with my mother. And you know, she is she's something else. My 105 year old grandmother. She was born in 1916. In the city of bath, Maine, they lived out not in the city they lived out in the middle of, you know, I guess what today would be considered suburbs that didn't wasn't really a thing. Back in 1916. And have a like, there's no electricity running water, heat. Do you know how cold it gets in Maine in the winter, you know, the heated with a wood stove. They took a bath once a week. And each child successively got into the tub that was heated by water from the stove. Each child had two sets of clothing, one for going to school and church. And the other one for everything else for play and household duties. They were not wealthy, they did not own an automobile. They didn't, you know, that wasn't really a thing then anyway, they didn't own a horse, they walked everywhere they went there in that time, in that area of the world, that country, or this country, and that that, you know that city there were not stores, there probably was a general store somewhere in the middle of town. But that was not was not convenient, and not having a horse or transportation or whatever, you couldn't go buy a bunch of supplies or, you know, go, you know, bring home groceries even. So everything that they relied on that they didn't produce themselves was brought by, you know, essentially traveling salesman, a milk with a milkman would drop off milk, there'd be a guy with a meat wagon that would come by where they would buy meat, there would be people who came by who sold things like thread and fabric for sewing the clothes that they had to keep in shape, because they only had to two sets of clothes each. When I think about how like compared to how easy My life is today, where I can pick up the phone or get on my laptop and order something and have it delivered to my house. Or I can go to get in my car and drive to a store 24 hours a day, and get anything, something to eat something to drink, you know, a newspaper, I can pick up my cell phone and call anybody in the world anytime I want to. So I think about how easy My life is and how my grandmother, you know, survived being born in that time. And her parents survived being born earlier than that, and so on and so forth. Um, it makes me appreciate things and it makes me appreciate how the genetic and spiritual legacy that has been passed down to me, you know, her husband, my grandfather, his ancestors came over from Ireland during the potato famine, the fact that they survived that is pretty big deal so that I could be eventually born. So all of those things, you know, all those things are quite a big deal. And chances are, you know, the your family story has similarities, parallels. You know, people that lived in harder times, and survived and thrived and whatever. And so the people who weren't tough and weren't, you know, Hardy stock, as we say here may not have survived long enough to have children. didn't become your ancestors, the people who are your ancestors were people who were survivors. Going back 1000s of generations,

um, people who had to live off the land or learn agriculture or, you know, or starve to death, you know, people who had to survive wars or perhaps a genocide or perhaps live as slaves, or you know, what have you. So you have this incredibly powerful genetic legacy. It's not just genetic, though, it's also spiritual, you have a spiritual legacy, that is incredibly powerful. And that's the first and primary reason why we might want to pay attention to our ancestors in whatever, whatever way that takes shape. And I'll talk about how that could take shape in your life, if it's not something that you do now. If you come from a culture that has celebrates ancestors in some way has an altar to ancestors, you know, lights, candles to ancestors, or what have you have special days and feast, whatever, you're already in touch with that. And I would encourage you to keep that up, those traditions have been lost for many people. And I think that has not been healthy. For our society. We don't move through grief, like, like we used to, when when we had to deal with death. And we're very afraid of death, and we don't accept it. And it just, you know, it creates a lot of what we in the schmuck roll call, so loss, you know, there's intense grief, That's intense, fear of dying. Um, so that is the primary reason to work with ancestors on a spiritual basis is that they are a source of power, an incredible source of power that you can tap into. And that you're, you have genetic gifts, spiritual gifts passed down through your ancestors. At some point, if your ancestors were, for example, you know, worked in the capacity as a worker in some capacity as a spiritual healer. You know, we might call them witches today or something else. Depending on your culture, then that's something that you can tap into. That's something that you have the ability that is a spiritual birthright for you. Now, I, you know, my theory, I don't think it's just a theory is that every one of us has some, you know, people in our ancestry that came from a shamanic culture, pretty much every culture at some point, every human culture that has you know, and I realized culture is not a static thing. It's changing constantly. But, you know, when we look at like hunter gatherer tribes, and we look at prehistoric evidence and all these things, we see shamanic cultures, everywhere, everywhere, every continent where there are people, every place where people we see people practicing what we call shamanism today, and so I believe and I would firmly argue that shamanism is everybody's birthright if it's something that you're drawn to. You can practice shamanism, without some people may claim your you're doing cultural appropriation. I think that is an over sensitive overreaction to something that people don't really understand very frequently. Yes, there are people who are practicing shamanism, who may dress up I saw it recently, somebody you know, some practitioners were doing some sort of initiation with a boy in Portugal, I think, and the people who are conducting the ritual had dressed up as Native Americans including wearing war bonnets and outfits that indicated they belong to,

you know, a plains tribe, plains Native American tribe. And that's cultural, you know, without connection to those actual tribes like that's playing dress up and pretending and that's cultural appropriation, or I should say cultural misappropriation, all cultures appropriate. all cultures borrow from other cultures, all cultures are affected by other cultures, but You know, when people say, oh, cultural appropriation is bad, what they're really talking about is cultural mis appropriation, which is taking something that doesn't belong to you, or playing dress up or doing something in a way that disrespects other cultures. You know, it is not disrespectful for me to prepare Chinese food in my home, though I am not Chinese. Right? It would, you know, it would be disrespectful, if I perhaps represented Chinese cuisine, you know, if I cooked French food, and then sold it in a restaurant saying it was Chinese food or something along those lines, or if I, you know, if I dressed up in a stereotypical, you know, costume from a Chinese era, and pretended I was, you know, without some understanding of it now, I, I have decades of martial arts practice experience, and I practice Japanese martial arts. And I dress you know, frequently when I train, we dress in a uniform, that is a Japanese style of dress, the jacket is a kimono, the belt is an OB, those sorts of things. I'm not pretending to be Japanese, when I do that. You know, I, we sometimes use Japanese words to describe the things we're doing. It is taken as an homage to the culture. And Japanese teachers that I have met have no problem with this. I have never, and I've spoken to many people who have, you know, lived in Japan or from Japan. You know, whenever I've never spoken to somebody who has an issue with us, but if I made some sort of caricature or some offensive caricature of Japanese culture, that would be definitely misappropriation, and, and something bad. So shamanism, anyway, is everybody's birthright, we all have ancestors that were demonic. You do not exist today, if that is not the truth. That being said, Can I because I practice shamanism. Can I take some ceremony from some Native American tribe and call it shamanism and perform it for people for money or something? No. And I don't do that. And I never would do that. I don't borrow things like that, that I don't have a cultural connection with. I don't. You know, I don't get into arguments with people about it. I don't. You know, it's just not something I do. And people can argue ad infinitum about cultural appropriation, cultural misappropriation. And it's all somebody you know, it's all somebody's opinion, anyway. But I try very, very hard not to do that not to steal from cultures that I don't have a connection to, and I don't pretend to you know, some people get confused because they have these preconceived ideas that, you know, shamanism means Native American spirituality. That's not true. And not all Native American spirituality is shamanic, either. And nor is all shamanic practice, nor does all that come from Siberia or, you know, what have you. So, it's a complicated topic, and I don't want to go too far down that rabbit hole. But I'll just say that, you know, I honor my ancestors, I do not you know, I try to be culturally sensitive as best I can and respect my culture and respect to your culture or cultures, because many of us are, you know, our poly cultural as, as I am. You know, I am you know, I am very mixed in my background, you know, primarily, primarily European ancestors, but from all over the place. So, you know, having that connection to your ancestry, there's a lot of power there, you know, and some people will say, Oh, my, you know, my grandmother was clairvoyant and read cards and tea leaves and what have you.

And if your grandmother was good at that, the chances are that you're probably good at that too. If you work on it, and you develop it, because you were incarnated into a family line that had a certain spiritual signature, right. So I've said this before in other podcasts, but from a shamanic perspective, shamanism is very animistic we think that everything is a spirit, some things that our spirits Have a physical presence. Your genetics has a spiritual component there is a, you know, you have, you have a heart in your body, there is a spiritual heart as well. You know, if you're familiar with the chakra system that is one spiritual aspect of, you know, the physical representations, one map of the spiritual side of physicality, you know, it's much more, it's much more than that. But so your genetics, your genetic lineage also has a spiritual component, right, you can think of it as a thread, or a number of threads that run up your family tree, if you've ever done your family tree, if you have not, I highly recommend doing it, that's one really good way to get in touch with your ancestry. And there are lots of obviously, there's lots of ways to do that online. People used to do it old school, my, my, you know, before the internet, my grandmother did my family tree back, I think 13 or 14 generations behind me. And, you know, had to go to had to go to Europe to find, you know, church records, and family records and all kinds of stuff. Nowadays, you can log into ancestry.com, or whatever, and just find that stuff. And that's pretty cool. And so that's one way to, that's one way to get in touch with your ancestry. To is to understand it, right, I've found some shocking things in my family tree, you know, I one of my ancestors, you know, got off the boat. And what is now the United States in the 1600s decided to get married right away, was kidnapped by Native Americans held for ransom at his wedding. Quite a dramatic wedding, you know, some other other things that that happened during that, you know, during that era of my family that make sense to me now. So you have all of these, you know, you have all these human ancestors that, that live that survived that had special skills that had spiritual makeup, and you can inherit a lot of that stuff. And sometimes it needs to be activated a little bit, right. So if your grandmother read read tea leaves, or your great grandmother read tea leaves, and you don't ever try to read tea leaves, you're not going to recognize that, that skill. If you ever, you know, in my my opinion, in my experience in working with, you know, people over time with clients, and students, if you have skills show up that you have not practiced before, um, there's a couple ways that that can happen. One, you know, one way that can happen is through what's called a past life return, where in a previous life, you learned a skill, and you,

you know, like, that somehow gets, like a memory gets reinvigorated in your in your system. And you are what some people might call, quote, unquote, a natural at something. And another way that that happens is that it is a family trait that was amplified at some point in your family tree, and you've inherited some spiritual legacy there. And that can come through and we call ancestral memory, and things come up. I'll give you an example from my life. So when I first started training in jujitsu decades and decades ago, I'm my teacher, you know, actually, you know, just started training, like I was a couple weeks into training, you know, brand new, and he said, if you don't know jujitsu is in this case, a Japanese martial art. I know there are other forms of jujitsu, but I trained in Japanese jujitsu. And he said, Oh, you know, I was living in Boston at the time. And there were a group of teachers coming from the budokon, in Tokyo, Japan, and flying in and they were going to give a big demo. One night, but there were practicing the day before. And we had been we in a bunch of other martial arts schools had been invited to go practice with these masters who had flown in and what Geez, what a great opportunity. And so we showed up and there were people practicing Judo, which is traditional Japanese archery. There were sumo wrestlers. There there were people showing Judo and Aikido and You know, all kinds of different Japanese martial arts. And there were some, some people they're doing kendo, which is, you know, sword, Japanese martial art involving sword if you've ever seen the guys in the armor, you know whacking each other with a bamboo swords. That's kendo. So I'm like, Oh, you know, I've never really used a sword before. I'm going to go, you know, and I went with a couple of my friends from class. And we'll you know, we'll go train with the, you know, the kendo teachers, that will be cool. So we went over there and, you know, took off our socks and shoes and got on got onto the mat. And, you know, this instructor, you know, there were there were, there were a few instructors there. There was one instructor who spoke really good English, and it was sort of translating for the, the older, there was an older instructor who was clearly the senior person there, I would estimate he was probably 70 at the time 60 to 70. Anyway. And so all they're very, you know, somebody who'd been practicing kendo his whole life. So for, you know, six, seven decades been practicing kendo very respected teacher. And so this other, you know, this other teacher who was kind of doing translating for him because he didn't, so the teacher didn't speak English, came over and handed me the shehnai, which is the the bamboo sword they use in kendo. And, you know, I picked it up, and I held it in both of my hands. And it felt really good. When I held it. I was like, wow, this, you know, this just feels right. And the the teacher who didn't speak English said something to the other teacher very quickly, almost sternly in Japanese. And the, you know, the teacher who spoke English came over to me. And he said, you know, the teacher wants to know, where you learned how to hold the sword. And I said, I, I didn't, I don't know, where I learned how to hold the sword. I just held it. I just picked it up. And he said, Well, he goes, you're holding it correctly, and you're holding it exactly correctly. And that takes usually some time, some practice, you know, and we didn't give you an instruction structure, we just handed you the sword. He wants to know where you learned how to do this. I said, I didn't, I never learned how to do this. You know, what was happening is a past life return, I don't have as far as I know, and none of my genetic tests. I do have Asian ancestors, but not from not from Japan. But I have never, I had never before that time I never held a shin I never trained in Japanese sword.

You know, it just sort of came natural naturally to me. So, you know, I've learned that later, through shamanic work and past life work that that was a past life return, or some skills kind of coming back to me. So that can happen. Um, you know, and, and certain things, certain things can definitely come back and come through, and that sort of thing. So that's another reason why it's good to get in touch with your ancestry. Um, so, you know, when I've talked to people about some of their ancestry, sometimes that causes a problem, because there may be people in there and in their ancestral line, who weren't such good people, right, they might have been criminals. They might have been, you know, war criminals or, you know, something that we would judge as bad people. Right? And people like, why don't you know, I don't want to have anything to do with those, with those ancestors. And I understand that, I completely understand that. Um, what I will say about that is, you know, if you think about that huge funnel of ancestors that became you, you know, all of those, you know, 1000s of generations back hundreds of 1000s of people probably there are going to be in every person's family tree. There are going to be some jerks. They're going to be some not so nice people. They're going to be people who didn't, you know, who maybe did some horrific things, you might find some horrible things about your, about your ancestors. And, you know, that is true for every single person, just the straight odds of that. The other aspect of that is culture. culture changes over time, and what was acceptable and normal and you know, perfectly fine 100 years ago and many different cultures might be horrific today. We might not even think about doing some of the things our ancestors did back then. But it was a norm for the culture. Right? Likewise, some of the things we made, like we can't even think of that now. Like, we think we're enlightened, and we're living in an enlightened age. But who knows, in 100 years from now, maybe our descendants will look upon us and go, man, those people were jerks. Look at how they live their lives, look at how they were, you know, polluting the earth. So it became an inhabitable, uninhabitable. Look at all of these things. So, um, you know, I don't know, I don't know what what will happen. But I do know that that's gonna be the case in everybody's family tree. And that's okay, you don't have to honor you have to honor the ancestors who were jerks, you should be aware of them. You know, and, you know, let's say, Ireland, let's say I find out that one of my ancestors was a slave owner. Um, I don't, you know, I have not found any ancestors so far that were slave owners? Well, I have to come to grips with that, right, because I did inherit from that I did, you know, inherit the riches that came from that in some way my, I benefited from from that practice, however, all of those people still came together to create a person who is horrified by the practice of slavery. Right. And so even though I have connected, I don't have connections to slave owners that I'm aware of, at this point. And I've done a lot of genealogy. My people, my people didn't live in areas in in. And at times were, in general, where there were, there were slaves, or at least I haven't found any I have found an ancestor who was who was a slave, but not anybody who owned them. But you know, I'm sure there are people in my family tree that did awful things that I would be horrified by. However, like, all of those people had still had to come together to create me a person who can work towards social justice and work towards making the world a better place and work towards not polluting and raising children who are socially conscious and environmentally conscious, and all of those things. So I can at least be thankful for having life and being able to be a positive force.

I don't think if you learn about, you know, an ancestor, you're not especially proud of that, you should necessarily just bury that in your subconscious, right? Be aware of that, be aware of how you may have benefited from that, be aware of what you can do, to make things better make the world a better place that should push you forward. Like something, something, some small thing that might not make up for the bad, some good, small thing might come out that it may not make up for the bad, but it's at least a push in the right direction. So don't, you know, don't necessarily be afraid of that part of your family. Again, you know, there's going to be if you could go back to the beginning of humankind, you would probably find lots of people and everyone's family tree that did some pretty nasty stuff. Up until very recently, human beings, you know, you know, by comparison with our standards, like human beings really sucked up until like, very, very recently, for example, you know, is reading at one point in Roman culture, it was considered a sign of weakness to show compassion, for example, like, how horrible is that and that's why they had gladiatorial games and sacrificed Christians by feeding them to Lions as a public spectacle and, you know, ritually strangled, conquered kings to death and did you know things we would not think about doing today because of the culture of the time. So we can be a positive force in our in the culture that we're living in. Because our ancestors survived and we can make changes we can make up positive impact on the world because of all of that. So, you know, that's one way, sort of working with ancestors can go wrong. And another, another, not go wrong. But another way that things can can come up around ancestors that may not be the most pleasant thing in the world is that there's also ancestral wounding, wounding gets passed down from generation to generation. We know for a fact and again, you know, there's a spiritual component to every physical component. We know for a fact that the, we can detect epigenetic epigenetic changes in the grandchildren of Holocaust survivors. Right, so huge trauma. And that changes many generations down the line. And in animal studies, we have seen that for dozens of generations, you know, we haven't been studying it for long enough for dozens of generations of humans to have lived and died in a way that we could study it. But when we looked at it, we can see it. And so there are wounds that can be passed down, something happened, something traumatic warfare, famine, getting kicked off your land, all kinds of things can have trauma that passes down, genetically and socially, the remedy organically and spiritually, also socially, you know, if you belong to, if you belong to a traditionally oppressed culture, it can take centuries to get out of that, if ever, if, you know, if it ever happens. And we need, you know, we need to recognize that we need to recognize that people who have lived oppressed lives are still dealing with that oppression, whether we can see it or not, whether we're actively participating in the oppression, oppression or not, we need to see that, you know, a good example of that is our Native Americans that, you know, in both the United States and Canada, you know, the history there, there's, you know, people still dealing with genocide, and all kinds of stuff has not gone away, not in the least. And so, you know, we have to, we have to understand, understand that these, you know, so we have to understand wounding from that perspective, the social aspect of wounding, the genetic aspect of wounding the physical aspect, and the spiritual aspect as well. You know, these cultures that had their spirituality ripped from them, or that had such severe trauma that there was large scale, so loss, all kinds of stuff going on.

And wounds that, you know, these wounds that get passed down. You know, the best way and I obviously speak from a biased perspective, but the the obvious way to deal with ancestral wounding is to see a shamanic practitioner who can do ancestral healing with you. There may be other types of practitioners that work directly with ancestral healing. Um, I am not aware of it. I'm not aware of other like energy healers, or any be anybody like that, who works directly along ancestral lines. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist, that just means I'm ignorant of that. Of that aspect. I don't know. So my recommendation because it's the only thing I know would be to go see a shaman or sramana or, you know, as I refer to myself, a shamanic practitioner, who, who does work with ancestral healing. Um, you know, that stuff is not, is not self care, it's not something you can do on yourself, I wouldn't do it on myself as a practitioner, there's some work I can do by myself. But that's not the thing. I don't do that I didn't do a soul retrieval on myself. And some other things, but that those things in particular. So that's where things can kind of go awry ancestor was not arrived. But some cautions, some things where there might be areas of concern that you can deal with. And it's not that it can't be dealt with. Because it can. But, you know, sometimes it might require an expert hand. So let's get to the practical aspect. How can you spiritually, work with your ancestors, let's say, I don't know, let's say listen to this podcast suffering like oh, yeah, you know, that's, that's kind of cool. There's all this power in my ancestral line, and I want to gather that up, but I want to be able to be the focus point of this power and, you know, have skills that you know, develop skills And all of these things, how do you go about that, and let's say, you know, let's start with a blank slate and say that you do not live as part of a cult, you know, in a culture where ancestor worship, ancestor reverence is a thing. Right? is, you know, we're, we're, that's generally not done in the culture and the culture that you predominantly belong to. If you do belong to a culture that does ancestor worship, keep up the good work, that's my advice there. and maintain that as best you can. Those are wonderful traditions, fantastic traditions. I love you know, again, watching the movie, Coco, I love the representations of Mexican Day of the Dead. And you know, what, how meaningful that is how important that is, in, you know, to some people in that culture. And I just think it's a beautiful thing. So, you know, one, one aspect is you can find out, you know, and again, this is a, this is a thinking thing, but this will help you create these better connections. One aspect is that you can find out more about your ancestry, you could do research on your family line, you could do genetic research, right, and find out where your family came from. And the more you know, in my experience anyway, the more you know about your industry, the closer you feel to them, and learn their stories and learn where they came from, as best you can. There's only you know, there's only so much information in the world. And hey, you might find some long lost cousins that happened to me recently. You know, when people are turning up better genetic matches with me that are on fourth of six cousins, sometimes it's pretty cool to think about their, you know, people out there where we have a common ancestor that are still somewhat removed for me, but it's pretty neat. So you know, if you can, you know, DNA research is good. Family Tree research is good, so you can get in touch that way. Another way is, you can, you know, and I did a podcast recently on creating altars, you can have an altar to worship your ancestor, so you'd have some representation of them on there, you might have pictures of some of your ancestry, you might have pictures of, you know, if you're living in a place that is not the country, or area of the world where your ancestors are from, traditionally, you might have some representations on an altar or in your home. That is another way to get in touch with your ancestral line.

Another way is to honor the cultures that, you know, if you're multicultural, or I don't know anybody who's unique cultural, but let's say you are honored those, participate in cultural events, learn cultural things. If you're Scottish, I mean, I'm Scottish. I haven't learned the bagpipes, or Scottish dancing, but I do own a kilt. I do go to the Highland Games. And I do go to Scottish festivals, and I listen to Scottish music, and I learn about the country so you can learn about things, this will create the sense of closeness for you. Take pride in your ancestry. And yes, you might have some crummy people in your ancestral line, you don't have to be proud of a serial killer if you find out that one is in your family, but there are other people in your family that you can be proud of. Be proud of your ethnic heritage, you can be proud of your national heritage. Okay. Where that goes awry is when people become racist or nationalistic. I do not support those things in any way. Okay, so some of my ancestors are Norse. From the region of Scandinavia I've Swedish and Norwegian ancestors. And there are some people who are neo nazi white supremacists who have borrowed heavily from traditional Norse and Scandinavian culture. And it it ang, you know, not a lot angers me, that angers me. Because now if I want to, you know, in some ways celebrate that part of my heritage. I have to explain to people that I am not, in fact, a bigot. I'm not a racist. I don't you know, I'm not a white supremacist in any way, shape, or form and they don't support that message. So don't be racist. Don't be a nationalist. You know, don't be those things. You can take pride in everything that you are, without having to put anybody else down see anybody else as inferior. Or, you know, be afraid that people are taking things away from you. You can celebrate anything. Spent a lot of St. Patrick's days in, in Boston, and Gosh, everybody in the city is Irish on that. But, yeah, so but that doesn't mean you know, the Irish part of me says that French people suck or, you know, whatever, I'm part of French too. So that would be terrible if that happened. Um, I don't have to look at anybody as inferior to feel pride in my culture or nation or family or ancestry. So, so participate in cultural cultural events, learn about them, spend some time in your culture, if you are not learn the language, if you are, you know, if you don't know, though, you know, if I live in I live in the United States. English is the primary language here, there is no official language, and you know, people think there is but there isn't. But English is the primary language spoken here. And, you know, I have learned some French because I have French ancestors and I have I haven't really taken a stab at gala cat, just a little bit. And it is, it's been so hard, I haven't progressed much but learn the language. If you're not speaking the language of your most recent ancestors, learn some of that, that would be a good idea. Um, you know, keep I talked about keeping an altar, participate in cultural events that are ancestor based, so if there are special feast days or something along those lines, okay, so learning about your ancestors, respecting your ancestors, finding their graves, you know, if you can, paying homage to them, praying to them, if you're a praying person, if you do shamanic journeying journey to your ancestors, I have ancestral helping spirits that I journey to. And you will derive a significant healing from that healing, you'll derive some power from that you might get knowledge from that you might get skills from that. It's, trust me, it's worth it. The payoff is huge. Even just the sense of cultural connection can be really huge. It's big for me.

You know, I can, I can remember as a kid kind of growing up, and being a little bit jealous of people who were, for example, Jewish and got to celebrate Hanukkah and go to temple and learn how to speak Hebrew and have a bar mitzvah. And I was like, wow, all that stuff is cool. We don't have you know, we had sure we had Christmas, we celebrated Christmas and Easter. All that stuff. You know, it wasn't really connected to it was connected to going to a certain church, but it wasn't connected to a culture. Or you know, somebody who was you know, Hispanic celebrating kinson era, right when a girl turns 15. That's pretty cool. wouldn't have anything like that. So when I finally started to get more into my ancestry, and celebrate some of my heritage, there was this greater sense of connection, the sense of belonging, the sense of participation, a cultural richness that I love, I love I still love it. And I love sharing that with people and going to, you know, going to events that represent my culture, and still exploring other people's cultures as well, because I have great respect. Fantastic. cultures, like it's fantastic. There's so many cultures out there, and so much to learn about them and explore and Gosh, think about all the food. I love to eat. I'm a foodie, I will admit it. And I love gosh, I love ethnic food. And by ethnic I mean maybe that is very ethnocentric to say ethnic food. What I mean by that is food that comes from ethnicities and cultures other than my own. So I love everything. You know, if I think about all of the different types of foods that I've gotten to try over the years, from Ethiopian food to Moroccan food and Chinese and Japanese and Italian and French and you know, Indian and Korean, and all you know food from all over. I just love it. I just think it's fantastic. Celebrate your culture. Take pride in your culture. Take pride in your heritage. Take pride. And your ancestors, but don't think you're better than anybody else. Because we're all in the same boat. And ultimately, we're all brothers and sisters. Your culture is not better than anybody else's culture. My culture is not better than anybody else's culture. They are what they are. They're different. There's equal, there's equal good and bad, and every culture, things to be celebrated, and things to not be celebrated and to try to change. Um, that being said, I have talked for it says an hour and 10 minutes now. But this, you know, this, I think, hopefully has been a good talk has been something I've been, I'm extremely interested in. It has been coming up as I said over and over again for me in the past couple of weeks. So with that, I will leave you. I will talk to you next time. I love you all. I hope this has been useful. And I hope to hear from some of you.

Announcer 1:11:24

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

Ep27 Creating Personal; Altars

Announcer 0:29

Hello, and welcome to speaking spirit where we talk about all things spiritual. Your host, john Moore is a shamanic practitioner and spiritual teacher. And now here's john.

John Moore 0:45

Hello, hello, hello, everybody. Hello, my friends all over the world wherever you are, whenever you're listening to this. Today I am going to talk well, I'm going to take a practical, I'm going to do a very hopefully practical meaning you can take what I talked about today and put it into practice in a way that is beneficial to you. So I'm going to take a practical approach today. Today I'm going to talk about altars, personal altars. I'm talking about why you might have a personal altar, what to do at a personal altar? How to set up a personal altar, what not to do maybe set up a personal altar. Excuse me? And what are the benefits of having personal altars? And you may have more than one and what are different kinds of altars and all kinds of stuff. I'm not talking about altars today. It's a topic. It's a topic that I love, is everything I talk about. Because I get to pick the topics. It's my podcast, isn't that cool. I'm also happy to talk about things that other people are interested in hearing about. And if you contact me through my website, or social media, or however, certainly I would be happy to entertain topics, I probably would not talk about something that I had no clue about. Because that would be a very short podcast and, you know, I don't like just, I try not to just make stuff up. do my best. Don't think I ever don't think ever have on these podcasts things are certainly my opinion and whatnot. So today we're going to talk about an altar. And, you know, we we all know what an altar is. We've all seen altars maybe you've been in church or temple, or you might live in a culture where you have some sort of spiritual altar in your home. If you're not, if you're not religious, Surely you've seen TV programs or you know, whatever were movies where altars have been represented. So, you know, what is an altar? Is it just a table? You know, where religious things happen? Well, in a way, yes and no. So, um, you know, one thing that I know and notice is that altars exist in all kinds of all kinds of spiritual traditions, right? And I don't just mean organized religions, where you go to a church or a temple or mosque or synagogue or whatever, and there's there's a, you know, there's an altar up front where religious ceremony is held, but there are lots of traditions going back to the beginning of humanity, where altars you know, altars were a place of spiritual focus. I know that in you know, Indian cultures, Indian shamanic cultures, you know, they would lay out a cloth on the ground that would become an an altar. I know in Shinto traditions, you know, in Japan, you know, many many maybe even most families have a Kami Donna or you know, a shelf in their home for the spirits is of type of altar and my my opinion we could perhaps differ on whether or not that constitute an altar, but I believe that it sir serves the purpose of of being an altar. Um, in ancient Norse cultures, they would have there were, you know, there were religious temples where people would do pilgrimages to and gather and feast and do sacrifices and that sort of thing, but they also had outdoor altars, that they would, you know, that they would set up and worship and I believe they would have indoor altars where they would have images of the gods that they worshipped, you know, that, that sort of thing. So, and might I add,

there is some evidence from prehistoric peoples of, you know, skulls of cave bears and things being arranged in ways that would indicate, you know, would indicate them being used in religious rites in a way that is similar to similar to and an altar. And so, you know, that have altars are things that are cross cultural and throughout time, and, you know, you may have a personal altar, you may not, or you may be wondering about why should have an altar. So, for me, an altar is a, you know, I always, and I say this almost every time, I always define my terms, just so that you can understand what I'm what I'm meaning to say, it is not to say that my definition is the definition, or if you looked it up in the dictionary, the dictionary might differ. Or if you asked a, you know, religious scholar from Oxford, what, what his or her definition was, the definition might differ, and that's fine. I'm not trying to present myself as, as the authority on definitions of things, I just want you to understand what I mean when I'm when I'm talking about this. So. So to me, an altar is a is a special surface. Um, excuse me, I do not edit these. And so when I, if I have a little, little coffee, go down the wrong pipe just a moment ago, I may cough a little bit, and I'm gonna leave that in because I am. I am imperfect, and my podcast will be imperfect. And I don't, I don't really, I don't really edit them. So coughs and sneezes, and I don't think I've ever burped or farted, but if I did, who knows, I might leave, probably leave that into. Um, so anyway, and alter is a special surface, where that that is a focus of spiritual activity. Okay, so if you think about, you know, in a Christian church, an altar is, you know, probably some sort of special table at the front of the church, maybe up on, you know, up on risers up above, and it is a place where, you know, communion might be prepared or, you know, special, you know, candles and flowers are placed. And, you know, you know, it's a place where ritual might take place. So it is, is a surface, a special surface where a prepared surface, that is a place of spiritual focus. And a lot of people might have little altars that they meditate in front of right, might be a little table where they place I don't know, an image of Buddha or some other, you know, spiritual figure, or light a candle or put some incense or that sort of thing, right. So again, it's a specially prepared surface. That is a focus, a spiritual focus or focus of spiritual practice or focus of worship. And why do they show up everywhere? Why do we see these in so many traditions and so many cultures across generations and generations of human beings and who knows, maybe someday they'll discover that, you know, other hominid species had alters, I don't know, I don't know enough about paleo, anthropology to speak intelligently about that, so I won't but You know, what I will say is that this seems to be an important or impactful practice having an altar seems to create an impact a spiritual psychological impact, having a special place to help spiritual focus, a specially prepared surface to have spiritual focus seems to have an impact on people enough that it has become an important if not absolutely critical part of many, many spiritual practices.

Now, if you were to walk around, if you were to walk around my house, and even outside my house, you would see many, many altars numerous, you would see numerous surfaces that I have prepared for spiritual use, or for spiritual focus. And the reason I have different altars or, you know, a number of different altars is that for me, they provide different they serve different purposes, they serve different focuses. So, for example, I have, I have an outdoor altar that serves as a way for me to focus on and present offerings, and I'll talk about offerings today as well. Present offerings to the nature spirits that are, you know, local, you know, local spirits are important, at least to me, and to many other people, but definitely, to me, and so, I place offerings there and I you know, I have a special place for them for, you know, where I can focus on them and interact and have a good relationship. So this altar allows me to be in relationship with these spirits. And that's another important use, right? It's to be in relationship with spirit if you have you know, if you were of the you know, if you practice shintoism you would have a Cami Donna, which would be you know, how's spirits in your home and it would allow you to make offerings and, um, you know, have a relationship with those spirits and in hopes of you know, providing safety and providing harmony and watching out for you. And this you know, we see this tradition, similar tradition would have different words for it, the ultra might look different, but it you know, very similar, very similar traditions throughout the world. So, I, you know, so I have alters that allow me to just the sort of keep permanently that allowed me to have an ongoing relationship and I you know, in my spiritual practice is shamanism and shamanism is all about being in relationship to spirit, and to spirits, to the different spirits that we interact with. So, it is about creating, you know, good relationships with spirits and maintaining them. And, and, you know, this particular altar does that the center of my house, I have some shelves that actually have a couple of different, let you know, a couple of different altars on them. And, you know, one is akin to material things that has some representations of deities that are provide materially and not to, you know, not to sound like, you know, money grubbing or greedy or anything like that. But this is the center of my home, and I am a provider for my family. And these are, you know, this is an important consideration if I were living in you know, if I were living in a hunter gatherer society, you know, I would have a similar altar that perhaps had images of animals that I needed to hunt for, to sustain my family or sustain my tribe. So this is a similar, this is a similar thing. This is not about hoarding, cash or you know, buying buying apples private plane, I have no aspirations to buy a private plane, anything like that, it was just about allowing me to provide safety and food and a home and clothing and material necessities for my family and myself to, to live to be comfortable to be safe and to not be threatened and, you know, that sort of thing. And it has served me very well.

You know, I'll do, I'll probably do a podcast on money on the spiritual aspects of money. At some point in the future, I think there are, gosh, a whole lot of misconceptions about that. But that is a little bit beyond the scope of a little bit beyond the scope of this particular episode I get because I Gosh, I could go down that pathway, at least for an entire episode. So maybe the next one I'll do about money in the spiritual aspects of money and, you know, that sort of thing. So, um, so I have that, and then there is, you know, an altar that is sort of dedicated to divinatory practice, meaning I, you know, have my decks of tarot cards there. And I have several pendulums there, and I have images of some of the spirits that I work with, you know, sculptures and that sort of thing. There. So, yeah, so and then I have, I have another altar elsewhere in my house that has representations of all the power animals that I work with, again, this is about me being in relationship with them. I have, gosh, I have a lot of altars, I have another ultra that as representations of the traditional elements of Earth, Wind, water, and fire, earth, air, water and fire, however you want to put it allows me to be in relationship to those elements. And, you know, amongst others, you know, I have a few others, I'm not going to go through all of them, I don't want to bore you. And I guess I'm kind of an ultra fanatic. But I have an altar where I do very specific ceremonies, very specific rituals. And I did a podcast on ritual and ceremony before ritual is symbolic action, right ritual is something that we do that is symbolic. So you know, when I trained, I trained martial arts my whole life when I enter a dojo space I bow, that is a symbolic action of respect, it is a ritual that I'm doing. Or a ritual might be, you know, I do a certain chance and perform a certain set of exercises. And a ceremony is something that's done to mark that a special occasion that includes ritual. So a ceremony might be like a wedding ceremony, right? A wedding ceremony might include numbers, lots of rituals or a ritual, but it marks out it marks a special occasion in time which is the creation of a marriage. And you know, other spiritual things are ceremonial, right they they mark out something something special and we have ceremonies you know birthday celebrations are you know include ceremonies at least in you know, at least in the US we have you know when not you know our our you know tradition I'm comfortable with I'm I grew up in we have birthday cake and we put candles on it normally one candle for every year the person was born, I guess up until they become a certain age and then it becomes a fire hazard. And you know, we sing to the person and they blow the they make a wish and blow the candles out. That is a ceremony marks a special occasion and includes ritual action, like the blowing out the you know, the candles representing each year of birth, the blowing out of the candles. We may not think of that as a spiritual or religious ceremony because it's very light hearted. But in essence it is because it's still symbolic action. It's still metaphorical, it's still you know, is meant to convey something through symbolism. In the ceremony aspect is That it's marks out, you know, years passing of a year in somebody's life. So anyway, that's ritual and ceremony. And so, I have an altar where I do certain ceremonies, I make offerings. And I told you I would talk talk about offerings. So why might you want to create a personal altar if you don't have one already,

there are lots of reasons there are probably as many reasons as there are people if not more, I have obviously, I have more than one altar that I use for different reasons. But again, it's a place is a specially prepared surface that allows for certain spiritual focus to take place. So, if you meditate or you want to meditate, you might create a small altar where you can, you know, that helps you focus the helps you focus your attention when you meditate or something that is inspiring, because an altar has the ability to impact us on a spiritual level and a psychological level, right is a physical representation, that allows us to focus to create atmosphere, to have a psychological impact, the things you place on an altar are important things you choose not to place on an altar are important. The size and shape of an altar aren't all that important. So, in my, when I teach, when I teach shamanism in classes, I you know, I talk to people about creating creating their own altar is fairly important practice in shamanism. And, you know, I have people from all walks of life who live in have different living arrangements, and they, you know, might live in a tiny apartment or they might live in a huge house or who knows, right and so, space is sometimes a consideration. So, a shelf can be an altar, or a window sill can be an altar. You can also have, and this is common in many traditions as well, you can also have a temporary altar, when I teach in the space where there is no no altar surface, I will set up a temporary altar, I put a I will put out a special cloth on the ground, I will set candles, it means a square, square altar cloth, and I will place candles on on each of the corners and I will put a bowl of flowers in the middle. And people will place sacred objects on and around the altar. And this becomes the altar for the time that I'm teaching the class you know, maybe a two day class or or what have you. It does not have to be a permanent fixture. Now there are advantages to having permanent altars, right? Like the more the more focus you put on something, the more sort of energy it gathers. Right. So there is there is this effect. I don't have a good term for it yet, I got to think of one but you know, if you've ever done this experiment as a as a kid, maybe you did it in school, where you took you took a piece of metal, maybe it was on a nail or a screw or something right. And you took a permanent magnet and you rubbed the magnet or you rub the nail over the magnet or you rub the magnet over the nail in the same direction over and over and over and over again. And the nail became magnetized right the magnetic like the magnet changed the configuration of the ions in the nail and it became magnetic and then you could you maybe not as strong as the permanent magnet but it did you can magnetize things that way or you can magnetize metal bypassing them through you know electromagnetic fields while that is passing through magnetic field but generated by electricity. So

So the same thing happens with the same things happens on a spiritual level. That when we work with something spiritually, its spiritual essence gets rearranged over time. The more you work with something, the more sort of power it gets imbued with or the more in alignment with its spiritual purpose. And I'll give you an example of that. I may give you a couple examples. So there are lots of traditions that use prayer beads, right? I know they're used, for example, in Catholicism to count prayers, you know, they're used in Hindu traditions and, and Buddhist traditions to count repetitions of chance. There probably other traditions that have something similar where you're counting the number of chance and so you know, if you have a set of prayer beads, so, you know, in, in Hindu and Buddhist tradition, I think they're always called mala beads, but I'll say they're called mala beads. For my purposes, I could be you know, if I'm, if I miss speaking or mispronouncing, forgive me, feel free to send me a message and correct me. Um, I mean, no disrespect, I'm just, you know, using the terms I know. So you have these mala beads, and you chant and you count the number of times you chant. And so in Hinduism and Buddhism, traditionally there would be 108 of those, it's a sacred number. And so you would count you know, 108 mantra, chants, mantra repetitions with that Mallaby set of mala beads. Now, I have been taught, and people may have been taught something different, that if I recite different mantras, right, so I have, you know, one mantra will say, oh, money by my home, let's say that I chant that mantra. And then I have another mantra that I chant Ohm Naivasha via or something, that I should use a different set of mala beads for each mantra. And the reason for that is that as I'm using that over and over again, it becomes imbued with the power and intention of that particular mantra. And if I chant a different mantra over the same beads, it's sort of like erasing the work that I did before or confusing, or that sort of thing, right. So this, this object, this stream of string of beads, is no longer just a string and beads, it becomes a sacred, spiritually charged object. That helps me as I continue to do this practice. So in shamanism, we work with different tools, I might work with a drum, I might work with rattles, right. And, you know, we might do ceremony to empower these tools to be sacred objects. And that's an important, you know, important part of the practice. However, we also continually work with them, right. So the more I work with clients, and you know, I'm drumming or I'm teaching a class and I'm drumming again, I'm using this for the same purpose and it gets imbued with the energy that is around it, just like rubbing a magnet over a now you have to do it in the same direction. If you rub it in the different direction, it's going to D magnetize. The nail so so the same thing happens. So this is the thing with altars as well if you have an altar and I'm in this is not to say that you have you have to be ultra crazy like I am, and have a ton of different single purpose altars. You certainly can have an altar or an altar piece or an altar space that that serves multiple purposes, they should be sort of aligned, you know, the more you can make them aligned, the better. So, you know, if I have an altar where I meditate and I have, you know, certain deities on there, I should make sure that they're, they're compatible.

This is not to say you can't have syncretistic altars where you have deities from multiple pantheons but make sure they're compatible. Sometimes that's not sometimes that's not really okay. And I've heard stories of I've heard stories of people Well not really know what they are knowing what they were doing, perhaps creating an altar, where they put representations of certain African deities on. And there were two deities on there that traditionally were enemies. And this cause a significant amount of strife until it was remedied by somebody who knew what they were doing. So, just be careful, you know, be it does sort of, serve us well, to know what we're doing. Um, you know, there is I'm not, you know, I'm not really love in light, spiritual person, I believe in love and light. I love everyone, I believe in the power of light. But I also believe that the brighter brighter the light, the darker the shadow, and that there are, you know, the idea that all deity or all spirit or all whatever is altruistic and beneficence doesn't always pan out really well and sort of ignores ignores things that are true in other cultures. You know, it's sort of, in my opinion, it's a little bit of spiritual. I don't know, spiritual optimism, but it's it's sort of cockeyed optimism and that it's overlooking some things that there are, that there are wrathful deities, there are stories of, you know, data is being at war. So I. So for example, if I were, you know, if I were following the ancient Norse Pantheon, I probably would not put a representation of Odin and a representation of a storm giant on the same altar. Almost, I really wanted to cause some strife. So here's it, here's the thing, okay, whether whether or not you believe that Gods and Goddesses are real or that these days are figments of people's imagination, it doesn't really matter all that much. Because what matters is that these these, at least, psychologically, but I would argue very much so spiritually, you know, and I have had lots and lots of experiences with different deities, that these are real. These are real intelligences. However, if you don't want to believe that, you could believe that they represent different forces in the collective unconscious, are real archetypes. And those archetypes could potentially be at conflict with one another. Okay, so you might not want Odin and a Frost Giant. So if I were to just say that these representations are mythological, archetypal constructs that don't really exist on a spiritual plane, which is not my truth, by the way, but you know, maybe your truth. And so I want to, I want to respect that you say that these are archetypal forces that that represent for 1000s of you know, at least several 1000 years, that represents absolute destructive conflict, and the forces of order and chaos being at battle with each other. And unless you really want that psychological representation in your home seems like a bad idea to me. You can do whatever you want, I'm just telling you, tell you my take and telling you what, you know, what might happen. I don't know of anybody that keeps altars to Frost Giants. I'm just using this as an example. But there are certain pantheons where the gods and goddesses don't necessarily get along.

You know, I know that they're certainly in some, you know, I've heard definitely heard stories in some African African traditions and I don't know enough about it to speak about the specific Pantheon or the specific gods and goddesses but um, you know, I'm just relating something from you know, somebody who has some experience with you know, African Magic in African spiritual work and relating is a story to me. Um, and then, you know, I, you know, so again, you know the other, the other thing is that altars can quickly become you can, you know, put, you know, have sort of the kitchen sink altar and I've at times been guilty of this, where you put everything on an altar, you know, I've seen altars that are just covered with stones and Oracle cards and images of angels and images of Native Americans and images of animals and images of this and images of that. And in that case, you know, you potentially run the risk of creating a an unfocused altar. And again, you know, an altar is a, to me is a specially prepared surface that helps create spiritual focus. And so if you have a junky altar that looks like, you know, looks like your local, New Age candle store with stuff strewn all over the place, that might not provide the greatest effect, it might not provide the focus, the spiritual focus that would be most beneficial to you. So it's just something to consider, you know, have a look at it actually had this great, this great exercise, and you can perform this yourself and you can perform it in your home, you can perform it with your altar, you can perform it with your workspace. And this comes from a neurological based coaching practice, where you would do an inventory where you would look around the room with a, if you're a coach, he would take your client and he would look around the room and look at every objects in the room one by one, and just talk about what is your first visceral emotional reaction to that object. And how strong that was, is it positive or negative Smithfield goods make you feel bad. So you can do that with your altar, you can do that with each item on your altar, and then you can do it with your altar as a whole, you can do it with different arrangements of your altar, okay. And emotions are closely tied to spirits. They are, you know, they, when we perceive, when we perceive emotions, they can sometimes be an indication that there is a spiritual disturbance or, or our spirit is doing really well. I can tell you that soul loss which is a breaking away of pieces of the soul body, usually due to trauma can come with severe depression, severe anxiety, dissociate dissociation, that sort of thing. So, those are sort of like the spirit body, the soul body, bubbling those things forward into consciousness through through emotions, and through, you know, sort of cognitive experience, how we're, how we're perceiving the world. So, perceptual experience, emotional experience, all of those things. So, those things are very closely linked. So, you can have you know, have a look at your altar space. So, again, you know, if you if this, if you listen, this podcast, you know, oh wow, you know, I would really like an altar space for X, Y or Z purpose,

you know, you can create one anywhere, almost anywhere you are, it does not have to be permanent, a permanent one is, is, you know, has some advantages, and I talked about that and how the spiritual energy sort of rubs off, it creates a vibratory field, if you will, or a field of spiritual energy. If you worship at the same altar day in and day out, you, you know, it becomes easier to worship there because there's sort of this, you wind up in the the aura of this object and objects do have aura. If you know of like psychics who do psychometry or find lost people or things or animals or you know, what have you. Frequently they'll hold an object that belonged to the person or the person war. And this is the same thing, the signature, the energy signature is rubbing off on the things they become, they become sacred. So an altar does not have to be a big thing doesn't have to be a ginormous table with a white cloth on it and you know, three foot tall pillar candles and gold plates and what have you does not, it could be simple. It could be surface with one thing on it or a surface with nothing on it. Frequently, we place things on the altar that help us denote the purpose that that put us in that create a psychological effect. And so want to talk a little bit about psycho spiritual effects of place and, and things and that any of that sort of thing. And this is, this is important. And it has been important to humankind forever. So when we find cave paintings that are 30,000 years old, you know, they're created in a way that creates a psycho spiritual effect, they're almost 3d by by torchlight, they appear to be moving, be created effect on the mind, which then creates an effect on the spirit. I remember that I have had there have been several occasions where I have noted almost being overcome by the psycho spiritual effect of place by the environment. One was I was visiting Cologne, Germany, and the the cathedral there is, gosh, breathtaking, unbelievable. Peace that's been, I don't know, I don't want to misspeak. But I think it's like 700 years old or something like that huge stone edifice. And when you walk into that place, it's dark, dark as a cave. And just immense and echoey. And there's, you know, flickering candlelight, and it has, it has a palpable effect on you. Even though I'm not a practicing Christian, I don't identify as Christian but the place the of the effect of the atmosphere on me, is you know, can be felt it could be felt. And undoubtedly, you've experienced this at some time in your life. And it happens, you know, when we're out in nature and we observe a beautiful sunset or we go to a you know, a special mountain or we view a an incredible Canyon or we walk into you know, we walk by a waterfall or what have you, the sight the sound the atmosphere creates certain psychological conditions that are, you know, can be felt that has an effect on spirit. So, your altar space can be like a mini version of that, okay. And so, when you if, if and when you create an altar, or you look at an ultra that you have,

you want to look at it with that in mind, thinking what is the it doesn't even have to be sort of, you know, really able to be put into words but you want to think about what is the effect you want to create on yourself with this altar, so when I'm, you know, when I'm teaching and I create the temporary altar, which is an altar cloth on the floor and lit candles and a vase of flowers. I want when people to come in to my class, to feel comfortable to feel like it's a place of beauty, to feel welcome, see the lights, see the candle light and have that sort of you know the effect of you know, we think about light as effect of feeling hope and positivity and all of those things. I want people to I want people to experience that. And so the altar, the altar space I create is designed in a very specific, conscious way to create a certain effect on people when they come in and to be a focus, it's in the center, when I teach, we set up in a circle, and it is in the center of the circle. So it becomes, you know, becomes an area of focus in the class, you know, when people are, you know, aren't focused on what I'm teaching, you know, some of their focus is drawn is, is drawn to this thing. And the collective energy of the class or the circle adds to adds the spirit of the altar, and then people put their sacred objects on them, and they become empowered by the group, and then when they bring them home, they carry that power with them. So you can do the same thing you can create, you know, in creative space and think about intentionally what's the space that you want to create, I have an ultra space that I use, particularly for New Moon ceremonies, in particular, you know, particularly with certain types of ritual and things that is much darker. And again, this, you know, dark doesn't necessarily mean, demonic or evil or bad, I think that is, gosh, that is just not a great way of looking at things. And I, you know, I think it was one of my first podcasts, it might have been the very first episode, where I talked about dark and light being two sides of the same coin, really. So, um, New Moon, which is when you know, the moon is dark, right, it's, you see nothing of the moon other, you could potentially see the outline of the moon, but you know, there's no Crescent showing, it's the opposite of a full moon is when the moon is going from its waning phase into its waxing phase. So it's a time of, you know, a time of rebirth. It's a time of fertile manifestation of, of change of all of these things. And so if we don't just read the darkness of we're scared of things we don't see and so we're going to project our demons into the darkness then it becomes it becomes it takes on a much different things so I have you know, I have work that I do with a new moon and a lots of people do full moon stuff. But you know, and I do that as well but I also do work with a new moon and I have an altar that is much darker, because it is meant to represent the darkness of the moon and the transition from waning to waxing and the transition from decreased to increase so is a very good time to do things like wealth rituals, or rituals around material sustenance, that sort of thing. So you know, it's meant to create a certain psychospiritual effect for me and it's something you know, creating specific effects with looks and music and incense and all of those things is is an area and you know, this is gonna sound like a brag and it is it's a little bit of a brag and I apologize, but it's something that I'm I'm fairly good at, at least from at least for myself, I don't know if anybody else looking at my alters would feel the same way that I do. But I'm I'm I've gotten better at creating the effect that I want using

using visual stimulus using different kinds of incense or using all of the senses. So you can do the same. You can use all of your senses. You can you know, if you can if it's safe to do so you can burn incense on your altar. You pay attention to what scent of you know what the scent of incense is what's the effect you're trying to create. You know you can reference all kinds of material out there that this incense is good for this and this incense is good for this. But I think like again, like with visual inventory, you want to use your senses if you don't if you don't like a particular kind of incense or you're allergic to it, I found out the hard way that I am allergic to burning mug words and some technicians burn mugwort as a way to smudge an area, and it causes my eyes to swell up and to turn bright red and look like I got punched in the eyes and, you know, my nose to run and become completely congested, it's very uncomfortable, so I don't burn my word. I don't mind the smell. But the smoke is really bad for me. Um, so you can choose things like incense, or even, you know, essential oils, or you know, what have you so you can use scent you sent, I'm in the process of creating my own instance at this point not to sell but for my own purpose, creating my own instance, based on based on an ancient Egyptian recipe that I love all of the components of. So I think together will be really nice. And I'm going to play with blends and things. So you can create scent, you can create visuals, when you're using your altar, you can potentially think about what sound you want to use there. If you're meditating, depending on your tradition, maybe you might have some music or chanting, playing, or you might chant or sing, or what have you. And all of these things can create a psycho spiritual effect. So if you think about religious ceremonies, you know, Buddhist or Catholic, or what have you, you know, they're burning incense in sensors, there's candlelight, you know, if you're at a temple, there's images of the gods and goddesses and there's, you know, there's people chanting, or there's people singing, very, you know, special songs, and that sort of thing. And all of this creates this effect that helps us focus, it helps us become feel closer to spirit, it helps us achieve particularly particular spiritual goals, or align our energy with a particular story, spiritual reality, or deity or what have you. So we can think about all of these things, when we think about our altars or creating an altar. I think it's a good thing, even if you don't have a, if you don't have a permanent space, or it's not convenient for you to create a permanent space. You know, if you have a shelf, or a drawer that you could use even temporarily, once in a while, you know this better than nothing, or if you have a cloth you can put down on the floor and put a couple of sacred objects on representations of things. Whatever you can do, I think altars obviously are good thing. I've got an altar crazy, but I, you know, I really I like them. And I think I think personal altars have such huge potential, because you create them to be, whatever, whatever you want them to be. If you want an ultra to help with meditation, have a meditation altar and pay attention to how it makes you feel when you sit in front of that altar. When you look at the objects on the altar, when you look at the placement of the altar, where is it? Do you have candles burning? Do you have incense burning? Do you use essential oils? For sense? Do you put fresh flowers on there? Do you make offerings. So offerings are another thing and I speak

all speak really briefly about offerings because that again, that could be a whole other podcasts. But I do have I do have altars that I use for offerings. And the offerings that I make are usually relatively traditional, for the you know, for the spirits that I'm working with. So offerings are always made to Two Spirit or to spirits, right? It's not just, you know, I'm going to throw some stuff on the ground or you know, what have you throw some stuff out there and whoever wants it can can want it like, your your offerings, you know, will be most effective if they are intentional, and there's lots of reasons to make offerings. For one thing, there is an exchange in spirit, right? One thing you might offer spirit is prayer. Like when you offer praise and prayer to daddy or spirits That is a type of offering, you are giving your attention and spiritual energy to that spirit. Okay, that is a form of offering. But usually when people are talking about offerings, they're talking about material things and certain spirits, like, traditionally, certain types of offerings. So I know very little about the practice of Voodoo. But I do know that there are spirits in Voodoo that are, you know, appealed to, or worked with, that traditional offerings are things like cigars and rum. And so, if you offered flowers to that spirit, it might not work the way you want it to work. When I make offerings to nature spirits, I, you know, I normally offer things that the, you know, the animals in the area will eventually, you know, potentially come and eat as well. So I'll offer things like seeds, I might offer corn meal. I don't I, you know, some people will do to, you know, offer tobacco to nature spirits, and that, you know, that's fine too, especially in the Americas, that's a traditional offering cornmeal and tobacco, or are really traditional offerings to spirits of place, and that's fine. I will offer tobacco too. If I'm, if I do a ceremonial fire, I will offer things to offer things to the Spirit of Fire and tobacco was one that I offer there pretty frequently. And I use, I don't use like cigarettes and stuff I use, you know, big tobacco leaves, because actually smells really good when it's burning, as opposed to the way cigarettes smell to me, which is nasty. So I use forms of tobacco and but that's really traditional, where I live. So spirits of place are really important and traditions of offering are really important. So for example, there are places where spirits of nature you would offer milk and honey, something I also do, I certain times make offerings, will say to the Goddess Hakata, which is a Greek goddess of sorcery, and many other things. And so, traditional offerings for her that I have done are frequently like eggs and honey, and incense. And obviously, you have to like if they're food offerings, you have to be careful about you have to be careful about you know, hygiene, things like that you don't want like rotting food. And there may be traditional ways of disposing of food if you're, especially if you have them on an indoor altar for any period of time. And you want to pay attention to that methods of of offering. So when you make offerings, there's usually a prayer that goes along with it that says, I mean, I'm dedicating somehow I'm dedicating these items to you.

And yeah, they're physical items, but in, you know, in shamanic belief, many other beliefs, everything that we see or experience has a spiritual component to it. So food has, food has a physical aspect, or wine or honey or flowers or seeds, or cornmeal, or tobacco has physical representation, but it also has a spiritual aspect. And the idea is that we're exchanging the spiritual energy of the thing we're offering for something you know, something in return, whether that's favor or attention, or you know, or what, you know, what have you normally it's for me, it's like favour or attention in sometimes in some traditions, you know, not to be too mercenary, but we're, you know, we're offering something to really get something in return. Like you know, you have a sick child or something paranormal is going on in my house. And by the way, making offering like if you do if you have paranormal stuff going on in your house, making offering offerings can sometimes be a really nice way of creating more harmony in your space. Creating a harmonious relationship with the spirit rather than trying to cast it out. Like, you know, it's like, oh, you have guests over and they're being a little raucous. Give them a meal, when they'll farmed out, kind of thing. So, so an altar can be a great base to make offerings. Again, I'll probably do a whole podcast on offerings, how to make offerings, what they are, how they relate to spirituality, but I just wanted to touch on that, because I do have a couple of altars that I use for offerings and one is outdoors. And I will very often place food on that altar that is good for the animals, the wildlife in the area, they'll come and eat it. And that's fine. I know that that's happening. That doesn't mean that the spirits of nature didn't receive that, because animals are part of the spirits of nature is that they took spiritual sustenance from those offerings that they took the exchange of energy, that I don't expect to get it back. In some traditions, people will eat the items that they have sacrificed. I do know, in places they will, you know, sacrifice, um, saying sacrifice, it is a sacrifice. When you give something up, it's a sacrifice. There's also the traditional word, you know, word meaning like, I've killed an animal, I do not practice that form of sacrifice. Nor do I place judgment upon people who do that in a traditional, traditional way, it's not for me, it's definitely not for me, I don't, I don't like it. But that doesn't mean I'm going to judge you, if that's part of your tradition. And in some traditions, they, you know, let's say they kill a chicken, you sacrifice a chicken, they offer up to Gods, but then they, they do actually, they do actually eat the, you know, they do actually eat the animal that's been sacrificed. Which I think is, is probably a little bit better. Because, you know, even though that material sustenance has been offered to, you know, spirits, or the spiritual sustenance has been offered to spirits, the, you know, the material, that animal might have been killed for dinner anyway. I don't know, I guess I you know, I'm not going to make moral or ethical judgments. On just say that I don't do I don't participate in any sort of animal or, you know, human sacrifice. I don't don't do that. is not part of my not part of my tradition, or makeup or anything like that. But there are traditions where, you know, there are traditions where that goes back hundreds, if not 1000s of years, and I can't really can't really speak to that without without placing judgment that I probably don't have a right to place. So with that, I have you know, been talking for longer than an hour. My coffee have my coffee here, it's probably probably a little chilly by now. Yeah, not too bad. It's still warm in my mug.

But I do you know, I would encourage you to consider keeping a personal altar as part of your spiritual practice. And consider the ways that you can do that. And, gosh, we live in the internet age where you can go on to Pinterest or you know, 100,000 other websites, and see images of people's altars and take inspiration from them if that is the thing you need to do. But to give you some guidelines about you know, really consciously thinking about what you might place on your altar, and paying attention to the psychological, emotional and spiritual effect, each item plus the collection of items if there's no more than one thing on your altar, really pay attention to that and the effect that it has on you and you can become then it becomes like a machine like a technology that can be tuned like that it's spiritual tech. Right can be tuned like a radio. But your what you're tuning is your feelings. you're tuning your psychology, you're tuning your spiritual effect, the altar, the altar is a tool. It is one of many tools. I'll discuss more in future podcasts. But this is a really powerful one. And when I was inspired to talk about today from some altar work that I had done with that, I will wish you all the love in the world. You deserve more love, not less and that doesn't matter who you are. I love you and you deserve more love, not less. You are beautiful whole and complete, just as you are. I would ask you not forget that and I will talk to you next time.

Announcer 1:05:39

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

Ep24 Stepping Into Your Power v. Standing in Shame

Announcer 0:27

Hello, and welcome to speaking spirit where we talk about all things spiritual. Your host, john Moore is a shamanic practitioner and spiritual teacher. And now here's john.

John Moore 0:46

Hello, everybody.

It has been a little while. It's been a few weeks since I've recorded one of these podcasts. I've been busy with summer activities. It is, you know, not sure what it's like when or when you're listening to this, but it's we're full on summertime here in the great state of Maine, in the United States. And I yeah, it's been, it's been a little busy, which is great. I like to be busy. I'm not the kind of person who likes a lot, a whole lot of downtime, although it's necessary once in a while to recharge your batteries. So. But I have been spending some time in nature and spending some time with loved ones and working on some stuff, some upcoming stuff that should be well, it's exciting to me, I hope it's exciting to all of you as well. I just want to welcome you once again, this is speaking spirit and to talk about something today that is well as always very near and dear to my heart. But this is something that I have a place a great deal of emphasis on. Excuse me, before I begin, I will tell you that I'm experiencing seasonal allergies. And I do not edit these podcasts. So you may hear me clear my throat or cough or sneeze or something and I apologize ahead of time, but we're having there's a lot of pollen in the air right now and having a little bit of an allergy situation, but it's nothing I can't handle. And I'm going to have a sip of a warm drink at the moment. Very good. But I will keep going and I'll keep pressing on. But the topic I'm going to talk about today is about is I call stepping into your power. And this is something that I always always when I when I see clients when I have clients and they do work with clients as a shamanic practitioner, shamanic healer. And I also work with clients, as a mentor, I work as a teacher and as a coach. And when I do that, this is the number one thing that I work on. Yes, there may be, there may be some other things that I work on that are the main focus of a session or that sort of thing. But everything I do, is really focused on helping people step into their power. So I'm going to talk about what that means. I'm going to talk about some things that have to happen before you can truly step into your power. And I'm going to talk about some of the things, some of the, you know, the not important but some of the things that hold us back from really stepping into our power. So what do I mean by stepping into one's own power? What do I mean by stepping into your power? Well, you know, there's a few aspects to this. But stepping into your power is really about, number one, recognizing that you are a powerful being connected to divinity. No different than any other being that exists or has ever other has ever existed. There is a piece of divinity that is the core of who you are. And it is pure, it is unaffected by your life story, your life conditions by your physical health by anything. So you are an emanation of divinity. Okay, so you are, for lack of a better term, a piece of God an emanation of God or the universe. If you don't like using the word god or goddess or What have you, I like God and Goddess, because I think there are, you know, when you know beyond the Unity things show up in divine masculine and divine feminine forms. So, one part of this is recognizing that and recognizing that you are worthy, and at your core, unbroken, perfect and whole, just as you are. And when you live from that place, when you live from that place, you recognize a sense of personal sovereignty.

And I'm going to tell you what that means, I always try to define my terms, not because I'm trying to get you to adopt my definitions of words, or that my way of looking at things is better than anybody else's, or whatever, just so that you understand what I'm talking about. Because, um, you know, whether English is your first language or not, English is tricky. Because it can be very vague at times, and words can have very different meanings. And I like to talk about the word love. And I can say, Well, I can love my children, and I can love a cheeseburger. But I, but that doesn't mean the same thing. Right? those forms of love. While there's a more subtle difference, um, there is a very big difference, there's a very big and important difference, I'm not going to eat my children, and I'm not going to tuck a cheeseburger into bed at night. So what you know, so we have to define what we mean. And I realized that in other languages, there are many, many, many words for love. And maybe we should develop that in English, maybe we should put that forward in English and try to develop some new words for love. So there's, but there's the an all in today I'll talk about, I am going to talk about what love is, from a spiritual perspective with spiritual love means and from a pure perspective, and we did a podcast on that some time ago, with my friend, Rebecca qwave. And you can go back and find that one, if you if you are really interested in the topic of love, which we all should be, we should be interested in the topic of love. sermon define what I mean by sovereignty, personal sovereignty, spiritual sovereignty. So sovereignty, to me, the way that I am using it means that I have full agency, or full choice full control over my mind, my body and my spirit. This comes with a couple of caveats, right? I obviously do not have 100% conscious control over my body, I have not meditated to the point where I can stop in my heart and restart it. But what it means is that the things that I have choice and control over, I maintain that choice and control. I don't hand those over to anybody else. I don't, I don't in you know, this might sound a little political. And it can certainly get that way. But it is my belief that no person on this earth should tell me what I can and cannot do with my body. Right. Um, that gets into some political discussions, and, and those kinds of things, and I don't want to get on that path. But I think, you know, for me to experience a full sense of sovereignty, I have to have full freedom and control over my body. That's the physical aspect. Now, I realize that some people have taken the idea of sovereignty to mean that no laws apply to them. And they can live their life however they want without regard to how it affects other people or, you know, repercussions in the world or laws or that sort of thing. Okay, that's a little bit problematic. Well, it's very problematic, right? Um, you know, there may be unjust laws that we decide not to follow or we decide to work together. Change or that sort of thing. But generally, I live in a society where other people's well being depends upon my behavior. And I have to mediate where my behavior might impact other people. So, you know, in the United States where I live, we drive on the right hand side of the road.

In other countries, you may drive on the left hand side of the road. But if I decide that laws don't apply to me, and I can drive on the left hand side of the road, I'm not going to get very far and there's a potential, I could kill myself in somebody else. So that's not really an expression of sovereignty, I'm sorry to say, I'm, if I decide for some reason, however, that the left hand side of the road is better, then I can shoot, I could choose to try to change the laws in the country, I may, who knows, I may be able to do that. And that is a way for me to express sovereignty, some level of control over what I'm doing, to try to change things. So I have to mediate that I do live in a society, I do recognize that and I don't, I don't take the physical sovereignty thing to mean, I do whatever I want in this world, I can't just go rob a bank and expect there to be you know, no repercussions for that, you know, that sort of thing. And I don't, you know, I try to live an ethical life where I try to make my actions. You know, I try to make the my actions not harm others as much as I can. We can't live life in this world with the zero impact, but I do what I can I do what I can to for the environment, I do what I can for, the community I live in, I do what I can for the country I live in, which includes disagreeing with some of the decisions that the leaders of my country make. But it doesn't mean, you know, that I take up arms against my country, necessarily. But again, you know, that would be a choice, but I would choose to deal with the repercussions of that, as well. So I but I do have, I do believe that I have agency over over my body. And I do believe that some laws that try to restrict that are are unjust, and based on puritanical, puritanical ideas, that other people, no, other people know what's best for me. But that sort of ends, where with where other people's human rights and civil rights begin. And I recognize that as well. So that's sort of the physical level of sovereignty, right? And we have, we have a body, we have a mind, we are a spirit. So, you know, sovereignty over my mental body, shall we say, means that I think the thoughts that I want, and I choose, choose, I choose to have the thoughts that I want, and I can have an you know, intellectual choice. That being said, I recognize that I am not fully in control of the thoughts and emotions that come up for me. thoughts arise, but I try to recognize when people are trying to force their opinions on me or, you know, force ideas on me and I'm going to speak, I'm gonna speak primarily about this idea today about other people enforcing their ideas on you. And this is really where the rubber hits the road, as we say, in, in the with the idea of sovereignty. Okay, the idea that people can tell you what to think or what your opinion should be, or what is good and bad, and on the emotional level. This involves a lot of shaming, to try to control people. Shame is an agency of control, or is the tool of control. And when you allow shame to control you, you're giving up your agency, you're giving up your sovereignty. So. So there's that. So spiritual sovereignty means that you, you know, you, you practice what you practice spiritually. You're not bound by, you're not bound necessarily by dogma or rules or whatever. You may follow dogma if, if it is your choice.

But dogma is a method of controlling behavior as well. Right. And there are reasons for that, you know, going back before we had separation of church and state, and a lot of places, we use religious law to control behavior, use the threat of threat of hell, and the promise of heaven or whatever equivalent is to prescribe behavior to say, you know, don't commit adultery, don't covet, don't do this, don't do that. Don't eat shellfish, don't eat, you know, don't eat this, don't eat that. And it's okay, if you follow those rules, it's okay, if you choose to follow those rules. If it's your if it's your choice, right. And originally, those rules were set up to govern behaviors to create societies. And sometimes we have to examine those things, and see if they still make sense for us. And I don't want to it is not my place, because that I'm not enforcing my ideas on you to bash any particular religious rules or anything, I'm just asking you to examine where dogma is, for dogma sake. And it can be, you know, can be totally fine. Right, I think Thou shalt not kill is a great rule, Thou shalt not steal is a great rule. I think those are great rules. You know, whether they are offensive to God or what have you, I, you know, I can't speak about that. But I think when we live in a society killing and stealing, and, you know, committing adultery and doing all kinds of things can cause caused a lot of problems. And, and so a lot of these rules are just, you know, maybe, I don't know if they're common sense, because there still is a lot of killing and stealing in the world. But you know, they're there. I think a lot of them are good, totally good and totally valid until they just but, but understanding what they are and taking responsibility for your own spirit. And so spiritual sovereignty is really about doing your own development. And there's a couple of pieces to this, right, a couple of pieces. And this is where mind and spirit overlap a little bit, right. One aspect is spiritual development, you take responsibility for your own spiritual development. And it doesn't matter if you go see a guru or you study with a teacher or you read and meditate or what have you. But you work on your spiritual development, it is a path of your choosing, not a path that somebody prescribed for you. And it doesn't matter if you you know, if you if you grew up Christian, and you want to follow that path, fantastic, do that. If you grew up Hindu or Buddhist or whatever, and you want to follow that path, because it was the path you were born into, that's great. But do your development work? You know, do do your and learn about other systems, learn about other other belief systems and that sort of thing. So this is the, you know, again, I'm talking a lot about sovereignty. And I'm gonna speak some more about stepping into your power in a bit, but this is the first step is really working towards your sovereignty. So the first part of spiritual sovereignty is doing your spiritual development. I think there should be some sort of loving kindness, compassion practice in there, because that is the that is the feminine aspect, the Divine Feminine deals with compassion and loving kindness, as well as something that's evolutionary that you know, deals with the Divine Masculine meaning. You know, I'm working, you know, tantric Lee or I'm working towards Christ consciousness or what have you in whatever spiritual system you choose or systems. I don't think you have to limit yourself to one I'll give you an example. I you know, I practice shamanism. It's my main practice. But I also work within other systems. You know, before I studied shamanism, I studied tantric Buddhism, and I still continue to practice. And I have other practices coming from other traditions. I practice, you know, some traditional systems have what some people might call magic, which is sort of

ceremonial stuff that I practice. And so, um, I don't think you have to limit yourself to, to one system as long as they play nice together. And I know plenty of people who Buddhism is a great example, I know plenty of Buddhism is one of those things where there are lots of people who are Christian, or Buddhist or Christian or Jewish, or what have you, and, and practice Buddhism as a practice. And it works nicely there. And I'm sure there are other systems that play really well together, like that. So do your development work. And that's, you know, that's an important, equally important, but often overlooked, is to do what I call in what other people call Shadow Work. In this is the criticality of this work cannot be overstated. Right. So psychoanalyst Carl Jung talked a lot about the shadow in the shadows, the parts of us that are hidden away, that are that we have rejected, that society has told us are bad, you know, it includes anything that we might feel shameful about shameful urges, all of these things, you have to work with that stuff to make it conscious. Um, you cannot, you cannot spiritually evolve without doing this work. You can gain some, you know, you can gain some spiritual power, certainly, you can practice some things and learn some things and do some cool things. If you haven't done your shadow work, you haven't cleaned that up, it is a recipe for disaster. And a really good example of that is, you know, these spiritual leaders who wind up abusing their followers, right, these people who are supposedly spiritually evolved, they are not, they might have special powers, and they might be charismatic, and they might have done a lot of work and know a lot of things. And they might be able to do a transmission of Shakti or, you know, what have you in each system. But if they are out there, you know, physically sexually financially abusing their followers. They are, their shadow has taken over their shadow haven't done their work to clean up their shadow. And they might be so blinded by spiritual light, that they don't see that they have a shadow, they might not recognize it. And that's the insidious thing about the shadow is that it is hidden from us. That's why it's called the shadow. And these are parts of us that we have exiled. Right, because somewhere along the line, we learned it was bad to have certain sexual desires or bad to want to be a singer or bad to be this or bad to be that. And so we, we push those things down bad to be angry or bad to be any of these things and we push them down. Okay, I can't look at that, because that's bad. And if I look at that, I'm gonna feel bad about myself. The work, and there's no, there's lots of ways to work with the shadow. And I believe I've done a podcast about the shadow, but I will probably do more. Because this work, I cannot understate how important this work is. And it has been a major part of my own healing journey, the work that I have done to people to sit here and speak to you, and live in, you know, quote, unquote, normal life, I don't think there's much about my life that's normal, but to live a life that I enjoy, that is full of good things and full of great relationships and, you know, doing what I love to do, and that sort of thing. My life is so different now than it was years ago before I began to Shadow Work and, um, you know, my teacher in shamanism introduced me to this shadow work that comes from tantric Buddhism. Strange enough that you know, things come full circle. And it is absolutely fantastic work that has, it is a tree that has borne much fruit, I continue to reap the rewards from rewards from that, and I continue to do Shadow Work, and I probably will for the rest of my life. Because that's how important it is to me.

So these are the aspects, these are the things that we need to think about when we think about sovereignty. Okay, and I, I want to feel bear with me for a few moments that I want to pull up a really good quote, and I should have had this ready. But it will take me Just a moment. This is something I found on social media. And or maybe I'm not gonna pull it up, but it's basically about, alright, I'm not gonna be able to pull it up. And I apologize for teasing you like that. But this is this quote basically says, Don't be the person who causes someone who used to love to sing to stop singing, or somebody who used who used to dress uniquely, to now dress plainly or who loved to do X, Y, or Z to no longer do X, Y and Z. Don't be that person. Right. And so this is a really, this is a really important thing you know, about again, about stepping into your power is about living your path on your own terms in your own way. And there's a huge amount of power there living life authentically, where you if you repress who you are, your path your core, you're never gonna live life to the fullest, and the full with full amount of power that you have. There's so much that can be unleashed. When you start to live a, I'm gonna say a ferocious life, a ferocious life, meaning just, you know, life with abandon. And again, it doesn't matter what your path is. You could be, um, you could be anything I, you know, I own almost hate to name examples, because it's gonna sound like I'm putting them down. But let's say let's say my path is to sweep up a hallway, let's say that is the thing that I love the most. And I do for work is to sweep. Right. So. So if that's the case, you know, do that with abandon do that with joy. It is not for me to define what your path is, is not for me to define what your joy is, it is not for anyone to define what your path and what your joy is. Except for you. And really, it's your job in this lifetime to find that. That is that is your reason for incarnating is to find that true path. And to live it ferociously. And maybe I'll write a book called Living ferociously. I don't know, we'll see. So my whole thing when I work with clients, and they, and they say, you know, I really feel like this is my path and this and that, I'm like, fantastic. Do that. Do it to its fullest. You know, doesn't mean you have to quit your job and sell your house and whatever, you know, start just begin. Just go down your path and do what empowers you what makes you feel joy. And so one of the things that I promised I would talk about this the one of the big things that holds people back from living their joy, and this is true, I think for all of us, at least most everybody I know and most clients I've worked with, and this has been true for me in my life is you. The fear of disapproval is so huge. And it holds people back from living their full life and I want to put this in a certain perspective. And I want to talk about sorry when an example. I don't generally I don't generally give personal any well I won't give any personal details of any client away. Ever But I will say that I have have had a client who is an an artist of some type. I won't tell you what kind of artists but this is a person who makes some kind of art. And this person is absolutely brilliant and was hemming and hawing about starting to show their art because they've gotten hate messages from other people and that sort of thing before.

And it made me really think what it made me think about was, what kind of a world would we live in, if a there weren't haters out there to tell people, your art stinks, or you're too stupid to invent something or, you know, whatever, to shame people into repressing their gifts, what kind of a world we live in. If that didn't happen, or if people ignored the haters, and just did it anyway. And I get it, I get how hard the hatred can be, I have gotten, gosh, plenty hate in my life. For almost almost everything I've ever chosen to do. That has one up being worthwhile in my life, I have gotten hate and judgment. Think about that world. Think about a world full of art, and music and invention, and everything. And think about a world in which you were completely free from shame. To do what it is you wanted to do, you want to dance, you dance, you want to, you know, become a doctor or a professor or, you know, you want to become the best street sweeper on the planet, or you want to I don't know, whatever it is. Train dogs doesn't matter. Doesn't matter what it is. But imagine if we lived in a world where that level of oppression didn't exist, we would probably live in a beautiful place. With a clean environment, full of art and music, and beautiful things and architecture, where diseases were cured. Were all kinds of things we would live it would be you know, it'd be like a utopia, basically. And that isn't to say differences between people would be wiped out. I don't think that's true. That would still exist. Where you think about, you know, you think about, you know, absolute geniuses, people who have made huge impacts on the world. You know, your Einsteins and you're Gandhi's, and you're Buddhists. And you're in your Jesus's you think about those people who really stepped out and bucked that. And you think about how many remarkable people that we never hear about that never make an impact because of fear of disapproval. And I get how strong fear of disapproval is and get it we are wired as human beings, we're wired to seek approval to seek social fitting in it is safer for us. We are tribal after all to survive. When we were all cavemen back in the day, you had to form these tight knit groups. And if you were expelled from the group, or shunned, it meant you could die. Right? And that's still wired into us that survival instinct is still hardwired into our brains. There's an area of a brain of the brain that processes social interaction. And it is strongly associated with the with an area of the brain that processes pain. So social rejection is very close to pain in our brains. So I'm stepping into your power is a little bit and I'm going to I'm going to swear a little bit and I apologize, but there's no better way to express this. Stepping into your powers about not giving a fuck about what people think, to some extent, to a great extent, right. So I remember when I was a when I was a kid, I was in I was in you know in high school. I was in I was in marching band, I played the trumpet and marching band, which, you know, in some places comes with its own stigma. We were not the popular band kids were not the popular folks, we were seen, you know, we had our own, we had our own group, and, you know, but we were seen,

you know, as some people use the phrase band and nerds, right to describe us, and I was fine with that. And there was in my school, you know, the person who leads the band in many schools is called a drum major, this is the person who stands out front and conducts the band and leads them. And I wanted to do that I wanted to be the drum major. And, um, you know, I'm like, that's really cool. I feel like I want to be a leader, I feel like I want to do this, this and that. And, you know, there were, you have to think, way to audition. And I think it was auditioning with nine other people or something like that was a number of people coming out for the spot, and only one spot. And I remember telling my father, my father is a good example of what we would refer to as toxic masculinity. And I said, Dad, I'm an audition for drum major. And he said, Isn't that gay. And by gay, he didn't mean happy. And he also didn't meet quite mean, homosexual. But he mentioned as an epithet, anyway, and growing up in growing up, in the time that I grew up in a in the late 80s, and early 90s, you know, when I was a teenager, I'm using the word gay was a way of was, in that way was considered an insult. Using it that way would still be considered an insult. But, you know, people would say, that's really homophobic, and that's wrong. And, you know, there's much more social pressure not to use that as an epithet. But it was used as an epithet to emasculate young men to say you are not masculine, you're not living up to my standards of masculinity. And there was a whole lot of pressure to be masculine, if you were labeled in masculine people might be violent towards you. You could be rejected by your peers, you could be rejected by your father. Right? And this is what he meant. Isn't that gay? Isn't that not masculine enough to be accepted by me. And that's a hard thing. You know, when you're 15 years old, as I think I was 15 When that happened, um, you know, that's a hard thing to take on your dad seeing you as less than masculine. in that age, in that day and age, it was it was, you know, it was a really, really hard thing emotionally. It was, it was a form of rejection. We've come a long way, not 100%. Since then, to say, you know, gay is not an insult. You know, it's not it's, it's, you know, being gay is not necessarily masculine or masculine, or what have you, it is your sexual identity. And, and, you know, it just is what it is what it is, and we're far more accepting. Now, I talked to my children a lot about this, about how we have a long way to come with accepting people as they are. But we have come a long way in my lifetime, a really long way in my lifetime. And, and we need to keep pushing that because people do need to stand in their own power. And that means having control over their identity and not feeling shamed for who they are, whether that's masculine or feminine, or masculine or non binary, or, or anything, whatever people are, they need to not feel shame about that. So anyway, my dad was trying to dissuade me from something he felt was in masculine but I ignored him and I'm glad I did, because I auditioned. I auditioned It was a very challenging audition involved,

you know, musical tasks and doing some marching and commanding, marching and involved an interview and looking at my grades and all of these things. To become sort of a peer leader, a student leader, and I made it I made it I made it through the audition, I was selected. And it was one of the best experiences of my life. I got to lead my band in a national parade for Independence Day in the capital of the country, Washington DC. And we won, we won an award for it. I later auditioned and made it into a touring band, and I got to spend my the summer that I was 17 touring Europe as the drum major for this, you know, this touring band was pretty amazing stuff. And if I had been all, you know, if I had taken on that shame, and allowed it to stop me from doing what I really wanted to do, um, I would have missed out on some of the most wonderful experiences I could have possibly had in high school. And so this is my mission, my mission in life as I want people to have those wonderful experiences, to develop and live those wonderful lives and do what they do, what they are meant to do. What empowers them. And it doesn't matter what it is, I, I, you know, I don't, it doesn't you know, unless it harms other people, I don't really, it doesn't really matter to me what that is, I want you to be good at it. So shame. Shame is a very toxic feeling. The most toxic and destructive emotion you can feel. Shame is really horrible. It does terrible things to people. It causes mental illness, it causes it can cause physical illness, it can it can cause soul loss. So shame works on many levels. And it really reduces who we are as as human beings. And we all have, you know, we all feel shame because we live in, in cultures that enforce rules on us that tell us that we're bad or broken or wrong. If we love certain things or behave certain ways or identify in certain ways. destructive, it's really destructive, we should you know, if I can move us past shame and shame is contagious. Right to people who feel shame, a significant amount of shame tend to shame others. So, you know, famous studies show that people who are homophobic have tend to have strong closeted sexual feelings towards same sex. Right. So there are a lot of homophobic people out there who have strong feelings for you know, strong gay feelings. And they feel so shameful about that they're projecting that shame onto other people. And who knows, like, you know, my, my, if my dad was really comfortable in his masculinity, what difference would it make if I became a drum major or did anything for that matter? shaming people does not come from a stance of confidence. It comes from a lack of confidence. This is where you know things like toxic masculinity come into play. Right? toxic masculinity and I think we need a different word for it because it is in masculine. This whole macho, bullshit stuff. I'm gonna swear again, sorry. Maybe I shouldn't apologize about swearing. Maybe that's, you know, maybe that's something that's definitely something I was taught I should not do or I was bad growing up. Don't say these, you know, there's a list of seven words I can't say. Because if I do it makes me a bad person. Silly. It's pretty silly when you think about it. But

this macho bullshit is not masculine at all. It is weakness, that is afraid of finding out that it's weakness. It is a sense of lack of confidence in one's masculinity. If you are the most masculine I don't know. I don't know how you would measure this the most masculine man on the planet and you stand in full confidence. You would not care you will not have a care in the world how anybody else shows up in the world or behaves. You'd be so confident in yourself You could, you could care less, if somebody was you considered less masculine, you probably wouldn't even judge them as less masculine. Right, because you would be standing in full power, you will be standing there in full confidence in who you are, there would be absolutely zero need to shame anyone else, or even have the thought that that that a person was less than. And that is really standing in your power to have that confidence that you don't have to shame anyone else on the planet, no reason for it. This is different. Again, I've got to call this out, because I'm making some very extreme examples and that sort of thing. This is different than setting boundaries around behavior. Right? So I may be fully confident in who I am. And I may not accept certain behavior of people towards me that violates a boundary. Right? Just because I'm confident who I am. And I don't judge other people, I'm not going to become a doormat and allow people to steal from me or harm me in some way. Right? Or, say things to me that I don't think are are, you know, I will call people out if they try to shame me for sure. That'll happen every time. And part of that is I'm you know, I'm not fully developed. I'm not I'm not standing here saying I'm better than anybody else. I'm not, absolutely not. I have my work to do I continue to do my work, I probably will. The rest of this incarnation and maybe many, maybe maybe many incarnations after that. Who knows? We all got work to do. I am not the Buddha. Not yet. There is a Buddha nature inside of me. There's a Buddha nature inside all of you or a Christ Consciousness inside all of you, or Shakti and Shiva or whatever phrase you want to call it for your divine nature, there is that. But am I completely in alignment with that body, mind and spirit? No. And that's fine. I'm okay with that I've got my work to do. And I will continue to do that. And not out of a sense of shame, but out of a sense of wanting to be better and to make the world better. So I very rarely say don't do this, don't do that. But today, I'm gonna say this. Don't shame other people. I know it's a habit. I know. It is a you know, it's something that we have learned because it is a method of control that we use to keep the social order in place. Don't do it be a force of love. And so when I talk about love, in this case, again, I'm gonna define my term. And once again, it's a weird word in English, I can love a cheeseburger, I can love my kids, I can love my lover, my girlfriend, boyfriend, spouse, whatever. But, you know, it's let's talk about pure spiritual love. Pure spiritual love is about one thing, and it is about acceptance. Another word for that is approval. When I say I love you, from a spiritual perspective,

it means that I accept who you are at your core. I accept you as a divine being, regardless of your appearance, identity, behavior, any of that external stuff. I fully accept you. And this is where it can be tricky to express divine love. But this means that even if I were looking at a serial killer I would accept them as an expression of divinity. Even as I hoard their behavior, even the people who have hurt me deeply done violent acts against me, stolen from me, tried to harm me in many different ways. I still accept them as, as people who are expressions of divinity. And so that is, that is an expression of love, I love the person, I don't necessarily have great feelings about some of the behavior. But that's different. That's a different thing. And so one way to become more loving and more accepting is to not wish harm on people for one thing, but to start to see everything and everybody as an expression of divinity, as expression of spiritual purity as an expression of nature, the universe, God, whatever name you want to give to it. And even if you are an atheist and a spiritual, not sure why you'd be listening to this podcast, but totally fine, I accept and love you for who you are. Even if even if that is you can find a way to do this, you can find a way to say, this person, this human being who has thoughts and feelings and fears and hopes and prayers and whatever. Even though you know, this is a human being and just by virtue of being alive and existing on this planet, I have to extend some level of human respect and kindness towards that, that person. And well, they have been perverted to the nth degree. Every great spiritual condition, tradition, not conditioned, every great spiritual tradition teaches this exact thing. In Greek, the word is a gobby love, right, this this pure, this pure, accepting love and that is used in Christianity. I do not know of a spiritual tradition that does not teach this at some level. And yes, I understand there are significant perversions of this in every spiritual tradition. None of them is immune from ignoring this, and treating other human beings as less than as outsiders. As shameful. So one way of stepping into our power is to give up, shame, as best you can. It's hard, we all feel that we all have shame. Everybody has a shame complex. You cannot have lived in this world without it. Ever everybody has that, but you can address it. What is holding you back. And if it is fear of being shamed, you have to give yourself that love and acceptance. You got to do that anyway. You have to come to the place. Where if you're, I forget who said this, but maybe the Dalai Lama, I don't know. But if your circle of compassion, if the people you feel compassion for does not include yourself, then your circle is broken and incomplete.

So well, I would love it. If you would start to show love, pure spiritual love and compassion towards other people. You need to direct that at yourself as well. And that's just as important. So you can practice on other people. Right Practice, practice showing them love and compassion. Practice being happy for people when something good happens to them, and loving and accepting them when something not so great happens to them. Recognize when you're feeling jealousy, recognize when you want to shame somebody else. Don't pretend you don't have that desire, because I certainly do. I certainly have that desire. And I don't think you don't have that desire. Recognize when that comes up in you, and understand what that's about, that it's conditioning from generations and generations and generations of shame, using shame as a method of control. So you can start with other people, sometimes that's easier. Recognize when that comes up, recognize when shame holds you back. Recognize when fear of disapproval, which is ultimately shame comes up and give yourself love and permission. Give yourself permission to be disapproved of, you know, when I think back to most of my the great experiences in my life, I had to buck against disapproval from somebody, be it my dad, or my peers? or what have you. The best the greatest experiences in my life, you know, came out of doing something that many other people would shame me for or disapprove of, or what have you doing this podcast. So anytime you put yourself out in the world and what a world we live in, we gather haters, you cannot I have, you know, I watch a lot of spiritual talks and things over YouTube. And YouTube comments are full of hatred. They're full of shame. Anybody who puts themselves out there and just says, Hey, this is you know, I'm going to share something with you. You're going to get backlash, because people have been conditioned into this hatred into the shaming behavior. It makes them feel better because they're projecting their their crap, it's part of their shadow. They're taking the crap that's inside of them and projecting it onto other people. And Gosh, do we do that we do that a loss. See that everywhere. The internet has been an Awakener for me about how this plays in the world that amplifies all of this stuff. It gives people who it gives people a platform for a lot of things, there's you know, and the internet's not good or bad. It's a tool to use it to shame and you know, hate on people and that sort of thing. That's not so great. But if you use it to share and uplift, and gather information and become happier, and live in this world, and connect with people, connect with your tribe, find people who want what you want, do what you do, you know, gather together form a movement, do it in a good way, please realize there's some pretty negative movements out there. You know. But if you're moving in, in a positive direction that's uplifting and empowering and makes you happy, makes you happier. Find your tribe Connect. Honestly, we can change the world this way. I fully believe this. This is the movement that I want to be part of this is the movement that I want to start. It's a movement about love. It's a movement about the pure love of accepting others for who they are, and uplifting people's dreams. You want to be an author and write a novel. Fantastic. How can I help you? How can I approve of you?

You want to paint, you want to dance? You want to sing? You want to make things. You want to start a business. You want to cook you want to raise a family and on a homestead. How can I approve of you? How can I support you so that you can do that and be fulfilled? And that the things holding you back? are not my shadow crap coming up and trying to push you down under and trying to drown you in shame? How can I do that? So that you can step into your power so For me, my personal thing is I've got to, I've got to a become more loving, and I something I work on every day. I have to love more. I have to accept more. I want to so have to is a tough, tough race. I want to I want to do this. I want to love more, I want to become more loving, I want to give up unloving thoughts. When unloving thoughts come up. I recognize them as something in myself that needs to be worked on. That's the shadow material. I'm being triggered by somebody's behavior. Am I triggered? I mean, having a disproportionate response to somebody's behavior? Yes, if somebody is causing me actual harm, I will have a response to that should be proportionate. Right? It would be nice to live from a state of equanimity, right? where nothing really affects me. There's a, I guess, a god in. In Japan fudo mu, which is, you know, I think is translated as unmovable mind. Right? Or the unmovable one, somebody who sits in meditations, sort of ferocious looking guy who sits in meditation and cannot be moved by anything. It'd be nice, it's hard. It's hard, I would think to get to that stage, but we can move towards it. So stepping into your power, recognizing that sovereignty, recognizing your path and moving on it, despite the shame complex that comes up. We should all work on the outside influences, right? We should all work on being less shaming and more accepting and more loving. But we can't change everybody. We can try. We can be the change in the world, we can be the change we want to see in the world, right? As Gandhi said, Be the change. We can be this loving, accepting, reducing shame, the shame level in the world. And honestly, I don't think anything would move us more towards creating a better place to live for our children and our grandchildren. And all of those things. So this is you know, this is, again, I feel very passionate about this topic. I'm going to be talking more about this I'm going to be writing a lot of stuff about this. So if you if you're interested this in this topic at all, you know, check out my website I'm at Main ma i n e shaman, sh a m a n.com. subscribe to my newsletter, follow me on Facebook, Instagram, all of those things. This is this is my mission in life is to help people step into their own power. Reduce shame in the world and increase love. Without I will leave you I love you all and I mean that. Not in a romantic way. I'm sorry. I'm taken. But I love you all and accept you for who you are. Your whole complete, divine and unbroken at your very core. And no matter what anybody says nobody can affect that or take that away from you. It is permanent. It is forever and ever and ever.

Announcer 1:04:14

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

Ep23 The Fears That Hold Us Back

Announcer 0:29

Hello, and welcome to speaking spirit where we talk about all things spiritual. Your host, john Moore is a shamanic practitioner and spiritual teacher. And now here's john.

John Moore 0:47

Hello, everybody, wherever you happen to be in the world, and welcome. I am honored that you have chosen to join me today. Whenever it is, you're listening to this podcast. It's an interesting thing to me, I talked about this a lot. I don't know, some weird thing that I'm fascinated with. I do a weekly radio spot, right, which is, you know, fairly real time it goes, You know, I know exactly when people are listening to it. You know, locally here, but with the podcast, you could be listening to this, you know, three years after I record it, or 10 years, I don't know if podcasts will still exist in 10 years. But that would be interesting, wouldn't it? And so it's for me, it's a little bit like a time capsule. And yet I feel like I'm talking directly to you. And I also know that I have people listening to this all over the world. And that's really exciting to me to love the idea. it coincides with the shamanic concept that everything is connected Well, not just shamanic. It exists in many, many systems of belief, then many spiritual practices, the idea that everything is connected. And it helps me recognize that we are indeed connected that you and I are one. Yeah. I'm sorry, if that if it disturbs you to think that you may be one with me. But underneath it, all we are, we all are the same source, right? We all come from the same energy, the same intelligence, well, not intelligence, but the same consciousness anyway, we all have access to the same wisdom. And me talking to you like this reinforces that for me, and I think that's a beautiful thing. I think it brings humanity and spirit together in a very real way for me, and I love that and it's one of the things that has, you know, that that I've enjoyed on my shamanic path. Today, as I'm talking to you, it is morning, it is almost summer, almost at the solstice, I do have a big Solstice celebration coming up, which I'm excited about. I'm doing a ceremony an online ceremony, so that people from all over can can join me in celebrating the solstice. If you're in the Northern Hemisphere, it will be the the summer solstice, if you're in the southern hemisphere, it'll be the winter solstice. The So, interestingly, this is a little bit of divert if you listen to these podcasts, you know that I sometimes diverge from the topic at hand, I promise I will get to today's topic. But you know, something that is near and dear to my heart is the concept of the divine masculine and the divine feminine. And how things you know, how they flow dynamically, one into the other, etc. So, Summer Solstice is, you know, the, the, it is a, an expression on a spiritual level of the Divine Masculine where Winter Solstice is an expression on the spiritual level of the Divine Feminine as it relates to seasons and that sort of thing. And, you know, if you haven't listened to me before, divine masculine and divine feminine, are spiritual concepts, their spiritual archetypes. They don't have a whole lot to do with physical sexual characteristics or or gender identity or anything like that they're just sort of like Yin and Yang, or Yin and Yang. And, you know, they're, you know, they're archetypes that do the masculine for whatever reason, we associated the masculine with times of activity expansion, evolution, where we, the the feminine is the aspects that are, you know, resting, gathering, healing, nurturing, that sort of thing, there's no,

these, these are just sort of poles of the same divine energy, there's no hierarchy, there's not to say that being active is better than being being resting. That's not the case, in the human system, for example, we have the sympathetic nervous system, and the parasympathetic nervous system. And both are incredibly, incredibly important, you know, we would not survive without them. And so we can say that the sympathetic nervous system is associated with, you know, the archetype of the masculine, because active and protective, and all of that sort of thing, where the parasympathetic is associated with aspects of the divine feminine, because it is healing and resting and nurturing. And you need both, and you need a balance of those things. And the same is true in the world and in spirit. Anyway, so the summer solstice is celebration of, you know, a recognition of definitely, you know, the, the longest day of the year, and the, you know, going into summer officially, and, you know, that sort of thing, but it's also a celebration of the Divine Masculine cycle where, even though we may go on vacation in the summer, and that sort of thing, you know, it is a more active time, when you think about, you know, there's, you know, it's a season of, of light and heat and growth, and, you know, that sort of thing. But I digress, because today, I am here to talk about the cons, the idea of fear. Particularly, I want to focus on the way fear holds us back. And this is an important topic to me, because one of the things that I am dedicated to, in my, my professional spiritual life, is helping people live more fully, and who they are helping people manifest their Divine Will. And, you know, and, and just, you know, step into their power, and that sort of thing. So I'm going to talk a little bit about fear, and specifically, go into the fears that hold us back and one in particular. And I'll tell you why this topic came up for me. So I, you know, I, I do a number of things, but that includes mentoring people. And I had a student I, you know, I am mentoring the other day, and she was talking to me about something going on in her professional life and use the phrase, but what if they laugh at me? And I said, What if they laugh at you? And I saw and I knew I expected this I want I just wanted to prompt a little thought on her behalf. You know, and what I saw was her eyes get really big in this physiological fear response, right? people's guts, small eye, you know, eyes widened out, pull the head back, hold their breath for a second. You know, all of these things that are, you know, lots of things that are physiological, the blood rushed out of her face a little bit. You know, there was a flash it took it was like a second or two seconds. And that really like stopped her tracks. Oh my gosh, no, no, no, no, no, no, that's not okay. If people laugh at me. Um, but what I want to do with her is get to the bottom of that fear and have her you know, understand that a little bit. So, so let's talk about fear and what fear is and there's all these you know, in the motivational speaker world, which I am not really Part of, but pay attention to those people because sometimes they do speak some truths and sometimes they are saying things that people want to hear things that sound great, you know, and so you know, there's there's something that comes out of this, you know, rah, rah, motivational speaker pump you up kind of thing that you know, fear f e a r stands for false evidence appearing real, right.

But that's not always the case. I mean, we have, we certainly have legitimate fear we there are lots of legitimate fears, that sort of thing. But let's talk about where fear comes from. On a, you know, physical human psychological level. Fear is a protective mechanism, right? It's a survival mechanism. We have fear to keep us safe. If we were, you know, not afraid of falling off a cliff, we might do things that were that are dangerous for us. So fear. You know, fear gets this bad name in some circles. Right? It's bad, shouldn't feel fear, should be fearless. And I think the word fearless is ridiculous. Everybody feels fear at some level. Some people who have quote unquote mastered fear are those who are actually really good at managing fear. You know, an example of that might be if you think about like Navy SEALs or some elite military units that have to rush into battle when people are, you know, shooting at them or, or what have you, or firefighters, first, other first responders, that sort of thing. To say that these people do not experience fear, because they're doing something that we might be stopped by, is just not true. It's, you know, they have conditioned themselves, to be able to, you know, bypass to be able to work with to be able to experience fear, and still do what they need to do. So that the idea that these people don't feel any fear is, is pretty silly. It's just not true. And they don't believe it. What I do think is that so, you know, on a, on a physical psychological level, what's happening with fear? And there's a, there's a couple kinds of fear, right? There's the kind of fear where that is more of a flinch response where something happens suddenly and it causes you to have an immediate reflex physiological reaction where you jump right or you know, you're watching a scary movie and the killer jumps out and you know, you you jump or you scream, or you you know, your heart races or what have you. That's a reflex response. And it's a little bit hard to overcome that flinch response you can with some amount of training, I've experienced this with martial arts training that I've done. And that is a pure reflex physiological response. The other you know, the other kind of, you know, and that is usually like that's over in, you know, less than the flinch part is over in less than a second. And it's designed to, you know, keep you safe in an immediate situation. If I put my hand on a hot stove, accidently, I'm gonna yank it's gonna yank my hands gonna yank off the stove faster than I can think of that hurts, right? way faster. It's, it's, you know, my nervous system is geared up to respond that way. So then there's the and then there's the other kind of fear where I feel and we have lots of words for this, like apprehension. Right? Where I feel an ongoing sense of fear. There's an ongoing threat I'm in a I'm in a bad unfamiliar neighborhood or I'm, you know, another word might be worried. I'm worried about you know, health. diagnosis or something along those lines. And, you know, long term that, you know, long term that's, we might call that stress, right? body's having a stress response. So there's a few things that's happening that are happening inside you. When that's going on longer term fear, you know, and it can be relatively short term from a few minutes to like something that's ongoing. Right. And, and some of us have,

what we might consider irrational fears or phobias that are that are ongoing, or ongoing worries or ongoing stress, really bad for health over time. So you know, a few mechanisms are having there's this area in your brain called the amygdala, that becomes activated. It is an older part of your brain. And it you know, what I mean older is it evolved before your prefrontal cortex. So when your amygdala gets activated, sometimes your prefrontal cortex shuts down, because it will, it will take priority, okay? And then you get physiological responses your body releases adrenaline, your your heart rate increases your breathing increases your blood, you know, your blood flow changes, all kinds of physiological things happen to you. In this is your body readying itself to fight, flight, flee fighter flight, I guess that would be the flight or freeze, so fight, flight or freeze, right, the three F's under extreme extreme extreme fear, the body will freeze up. This is, you know, this is a safety mechanism, it doesn't seem safe. But if you think about people, when we were, you know, not in modern society and living among dangerous animals, and you know, that sort of thing, freezing might save you up, if, you know, we were facing a saber toothed tiger, stopping all movement might keep you safe from Tiger seeing you or knowing you're there. And being able to, you know, eat you as a snack. Okay, so and, you know, same thing sort of fight or flight, right? how we respond to those things. And those are sympathetic nervous system responses. And they're all, you know, you know, they're not just sympathetic nervous system, but there's all kinds of neurotransmitters and hormones and all kinds of things going on, that make these physiological changes in our body, when we feel fear, and we run away or we fight or we freeze up. freezing up is a really extreme, you know, when you see if you've ever seen somebody be so freaked out that they go into a fetal position. That's about as extreme as it gets, you know, some people faint or pass out because they have a, like a super overactive fear mechanism. So that's sort of the physiological body side of fear. Right. And obviously, there's a psychological aspect as well. And I'll dive more into that. But that, you know, on the mental, psychological, emotional side, human beings in general, not everyone, so I can't speak to each individual in the universe, but human beings have a strong bias towards the negative. And what that means is that experiences that we place a negative value on, we tend to weigh more heavily. So there's a bias, right? We, we overestimate how often the negative things happen, and underestimate how often the positive things happen. And there is again, there's an evolutionary reason for this, right? So if I go down to the watering hole, you know, you know back in the saber toothed Tiger days, we get another watering hole every day for two years. And then one day we go down to the watering hole and a saber toothed Tiger eats my friend. I'm going to have a real fear about going down to that watering hole again. And I'm going to remember Number, not the, you know, two years that I've gone down there, I'm going to remember that one really negative incident. And that is designed to keep me safe. Because that watering hole may not mean no longer be safe. I might go well, you know, you know, if I didn't have that I might go, Well, you know, I've gone two years in a row, it's probably going to be okay today. And it might not, it may not be safe any longer.

That's the thing that's going to stick out in my brain. And in, in general, studies have shown that that's how human beings are. And it makes perfect sense, from evolutionary psychology, why that wouldn't be why that'd be negative. So an example of that is, you know, a lot of human beings report being afraid of sharks, for example. Sharks are big and scary. And you know, some of them do. Some of them do kill human beings. Right. And then, and you know, the movie Jaws back in the 70s really changed, changed things. For a lot of people, a lot of people were afraid to go in the water after that movie, it was so dramatic, dramatic things stand out. It's you know, the cognitive bias here is called the availability heuristic, really dramatic events stand out for us, we remember them. And so we overestimate their frequency. The truth is that more people are killed by cows globally than are killed by sharks every year. It's just less dramatic. When a plane crashes, you know, we see plane crashes or something dramatic, like 911. And a lot of people are afraid to fly. And yet, they'll get in their car every day. But statistically, that doesn't make sense. Because, you know, you're much you know, the, you know, car travel is much less safe than air travel. Statistically speaking, but our, you know, our, our brains, our minds, our bodies that are not about analyzing statistics, it's not about analyzing what is real or what is genuine. And that's, that's an important thing to remember. A lot of people think they are rational and logical, like Mr. Spock from Star Trek. Um, human beings just don't operate that that way. And, and I think most of the time, that's okay. I mean, most of the time, that's fine. I think instinct. Personally, I think instinct is a combination of spiritual connection, emotion and logic, right? emotion and knowledge. And spiritual connection leads to instinct. And sometimes things that are completely illogical. Makes sense. You know, that person that gets a bad feeling and misses a flight, and then it turns out the flight crashes later. So you know, intuition works. And sometimes it works in illogical ways. But I think it's important to do a little self reflection sometimes. And understand when you're catastrophizing, right, we're making, we're thinking about potential catastrophes all the time. You know, in our life, when we think about when, you know, when all the times we're thinking about the worst things that can happen to us. And we think about all the things that could go wrong. Instead of what could go right, what could go right. And working through some of the fears that hold us back that all they do is hold us back, right? They're not actually keeping us safe. And, you know, what I found with human beings is that a lot of that a lot of those fears are social fears. Right? Again, human beings we we evolved in tribal and tribes right in tribal cultures, and being ostracized or outcast. From a tribe meant that you did not survive, probably, it was a threat, it was an existential threat, it was a threat to your very life to be cast out from the tribe.

And so we have an implicit bias towards a belonging to tribes, you can look around and see, to what is, to me a crazy level of tribalism in the world. And that shows up as all sorts of, you know, isms like racism, nationalism. You know, I'm better than you because I follow this sports team, I'm better than you, because I was born in this country, I'm better than you, because my skin is a different shade, a different tone, a different level of darkness than you, you know, and none of that really makes any sense. None of that is, you know, we're, we're all we should all be part of the human tribe, right? And that's, you know, it should go without saying that it's incredibly silly to put people in these boxes. But we do that. We absolutely do that. I'm better than you, because I'm a man, I'm better than you. Because I'm one I'm better than you because I practice this religion or spirituality, or my parents have more money than your parents or what have you. So there's this tribalism that goes on. And along with that, there's this sort of othering, you don't want to be, you know, if you're part of this group, you don't want to be considered and other we want to be included. And there is a structure in the brain. That is, that is triggered with both physical pain and being socially excluded. And so social exclusion registers as almost like physical pain, the same way, same way in some areas of the brain.

And I'm, I'm blanking a little bit on the name, but I think it's the intake, anterior cingulate cortex. And if you're a brain, you know, if you're a brain expert, you might correct me. But I think it's the anterior cingulate cortex is part of the brain that registers things like social exclusion, and physical pain. Isn't that interesting? How much our survival instinct so when I asked my student, what if they laugh at you, and I saw a, you know, a small but measured physiological fear response. I knew what was going on inside of her that part of her brain was triggered, like she was imagining, Oh, my gosh, I'm gonna be outcast. From this group, they're gonna think less of me. And there's not a you know, there's not a logical like, Oh my gosh, there will be these x, y, z repercussions. It will have no effect on my have no effect on my life. I remember. I remember taking, taking my daughter shopping one time, and we were going to, we're going to this town where nobody would know us. And my daughter spilled something on her shirt. Oh, my gosh, I can't go in here with a stain on my shirt, you know? And I said, Well, you know, don't worry about it. Nobody in there, knows who you are. But she couldn't, she just couldn't do it. And I had to I just stop somewhere and go in and buy her a nice shirt. And then she could go you know, go somewhere into a restroom and change. And then we could go shopping in this town where nobody knew her nobody recognized her would have no effect on her life whatsoever. If if somebody saw her with a stain on her shirt. But I understand again, these you know, these things are not necessarily the sphere is not necessarily logical. It is not an end. To an extent it can't be you know, it can't be reasoned with either because reason and logic and those things live in a different part of your brain. They live in your prefrontal cortex. And this fear stuff is going on in your amygdala and you're into anterior cingulate, anterior cingulate gyrate, probably gyrus, no, I'm probably pronouncing that wrong. Most likely, I'm pronouncing that wrong, but that's okay. Regardless, you know, having some understanding of what's going on, there is actually a step towards overcoming, overcoming that fear, right? You know, something, something that, you know, something that has helped me. You know, when I enter situations where I feel fear, let's say, I've got, you know, being interviewed or something along those something's going on, and the first time and I'm a little nervous about it, you know, it helps me a little bit to remind myself that there's no Tiger in the forest, right, there's no Tiger ready to jump out and eat me in the forest. And so at least I understand what's going on, I understand why the physiological fear response is happening. It's the same thing that would be happening to me, if I were, you know, living in an age where I were taught, you know, potentially threatened by a tiger in the forest. And, you know, everything's happening to me, physiologically. So let's talk about, you know, one of the biggest fears that holds people back. And I've touched on this a little bit already. And that is the fear of disapproval. Right. We so badly want approval, and in fact, in

you know, in a, I guess, spiritual psychological method that I really, really like, and really resonate with called the Sedona Method, they see a lot of these, a lot of your emotional energy, all the stuff, culminating what they call these three wants, right? And want in this case, is synonymous with lack, right? So I lack this, I lack that, it's a feeling of I lack this. And the three big ones are wanting safety, right, wanting to feel safe. Or, you know, another, again, a synonym for that is lacking, I lack the feeling of safety. Because when I say when I want safety, another one is control, I lack control, control over situation control over myself control over somebody else, I want to be in control of something. And the third one is wanting approval. So, you know, I lack approval, I lacked the feeling of being approved of. So the fear of disapproval is a big one. And that's one that I see. That's one that I see people that I work with, and just people that I know, I see that hold so many people back from truly expressing who they are. And, you know, on a level on some level I do under you know, I understand how that can be a reasonable fear. So, for example, as I record this, we are in the middle of Pride Month, and I think that's a global thing. And you know, it's big in the United States, where it is a you know, celebration of an a respect for people in the LGBTQ plus community. Um, and I do you know, I remember it wasn't that long ago, definitely during my during my life. And I can talk about well, I can talk about you know, some personal personal connection with this, I guess. But, you know, I can remember in there's happening in, you know, it still happens today in play, you know, different places in the world, but people are being killed for being gay. People are being killed because they love somebody who is the same same physical sex that they are Can you imagine anything more horrific, I'm going to kill you because of who you are. So there are some very real aspects of fearing disapproval. Right, of being ostracized, there could be some some definite downplaying points to that. And, you know, I do remember, I do remember some famous cases. And one happening, I live in the state of Maine, which is in the northeast, the far northeast of the United States. And growing up, there was a young man killed, because he was gay by being thrown off a bridge in a town called Bangor, Maine. And Bangor is where the author Steve, Stephen King, lives if you've, you know, read his books, or watched movies based on his books. And there are some allusions to that incident, I think he was shaken up by that incident. There are some allusions to that incident in his book and movie, it, which is about this demon clown that lives in a town called dairy and dairy is based on the town of Bangor. So anyway, it's a little bit of a personal connection, I remember being utterly shocked by that. Growing up, and there have been, there have been others, there have been probably many others. And it's shocking and horrible. And, you know, I understand you know, only as an outsider, I can understand why that is. Why that fear of disapproval, you know, and certainly certainly being gay or being transgender or what, what have you, historically, you could be outcast from your family, you could be

you know, pushed, you know, pushed out of jobs discriminated against. So, in that case, there is a lot, you know, some logic to fear of disapproval. And as I've talked before being pushed out of a tribe being acquired by the tribe is an existential threat. So if it doesn't make sense, though, I mean, some of it, you know, my, my daughter, you know, I understood her feeling, and I respected that and I helped work, you know, work through that by buying her new shirt. But when we, when we looked at that, you know, if we, if we examined that, it had no, you know, her fear her abject physiological fear to walking into a store with a stain on her shirt, she would not have been treated differently, it would not have had any effect on her life. So it, it was a bit illogical. And it was, you know, it's a minor incident, but it just points to something greater. Right. And so, um, you know, I have had clients, and I've known people and, you know, just friends and that sort of thing, who have held off on dreams or doing something that they really wanted to do. Because they were afraid of people's disapproval. You know, I know somebody wanted to dance and her, you know, take a dance class and her husband said something very rude and about her being uncoordinated. And you're just going to be a laughingstock, and whenever I held her back, and I'll tell you that there are no, you know, they're no longer married these this couple, I mean, it's just just a terrible, hurtful, horrible thing. very insensitive. You know, and I know artists who have held back, because really being vulnerable, really putting it out there is tough. It's tough when I want to express who I really am and that might, there's the risk of that being rejected by people. I care about people I don't care about. I get it. I do. It's unfair. It's unfortunate to me, and it's one of the things that I you know, I work with on a professional level, to work with my clients on things having to do with Stepping out, stepping into who they are being okay. And really living their lives and and experiencing a sense of fullness with that. On a personal level, I want people who are around me, and everyone is important. I want people to feel free to be who they are. You know, embrace your, you know, you're somebody who likes this kind of music. And I may not like it, but I don't care if you're passionate about it. That's fantastic. I will not think less of you because we have different tastes in music, or do you like to play video games that I don't, or you? You know, you aspire to be a flamenco dancer and I know nothing about it. I will be fascinated by what you are fascinated by. I'll be fascinated by your passions. And what a better world we would live in if people were just felt free to pursue their passions, how full would the world be of art and beautiful things and people doing charity work and people pursuing businesses and dreams and writing and poets and healers? people practicing their spirituality in their own personal way. Without fear of repercussion. People being free to live out their life in the way of their choosing, regardless of gender, or biological sex or you know, race or religion or national origin or, or what have you.

What a world we would be if we did everything that we could to make people feel comfortable. Just being who they are more fully. Even if it didn't jive with who we are. You know, we're living in an era that is so divided politically, economically, even, you know, even our sense of reality tends to be divvied up. I watched this new station, you watch that news station, they said this, this one said that, underneath at all, we are all a divine spark, we were all a part of the creator of the universe, if you want to call that God or the universe or goddess or what have you, underneath all of that. We are divine. And wouldn't this be a greater world if we just allowed if we helped people find their divine spark, and just allowed it to shine? If we didn't hold off if we didn't, if we didn't judge if we helped people feel less judged, made people more comfortable. So I do like to give at least you know, a couple pieces of hopefully practical advice and you know, these will come. You know, I don't know if this is specifically spiritual advice, or, you know, body, mind, and spirit are all one. And we're all emanations of spirit. So I guess it doesn't matter much. Again, you know, drawing, drawing false divisions, sometimes helps us think about things but in the end, it gets confusing because they are false divisions. So, I'm gonna, you know, leave you maybe with a couple of practical tips about what you might do to overcome some of the fears in your life. The first one comes from you know, when, you know, I've taught haven't been doing it for a while since the pandemic started, but, you know, I taught martial arts for a really, really long time. And I teach martial arts not just as a physical Rule of self defense and fitness but as a spiritual develop a tool for spiritual development, and I teach the mind body spirits at aspects, the energetic aspect, you know, very internal styles of teaching. And one of the things I would sort of not necessarily give us an assignment, but tell my students that it would be a good idea as a practice is to do something that you suck at, do something that you're absolutely terrible at, and do it just for the enjoyment and enjoy it fully. I'll give you an example. I am a terrible bowler, I'm not good at bowling. But if somebody were to ask me to go bowling, I would enthusiastically say yes, I would enjoy the entire experience. And I would enjoy even losing to someone who is a much better bowler than I am. One time I played table tennis with somebody who was an amazing competitive player from India. And I don't know, if he enjoyed it, he enjoyed the game, because I was absolutely no match for him. But participating and watching and like, he was kind of an artist, you know, it was, it was just beautiful. And I think he enjoyed, like he couldn't get anybody to agree to play with him, right. And it'd be, you know, a little bit like, me trying to box a professional boxer or something like he, you know, he could, there was no game for him, but at least I stood at the table with him. And let him serve to me in ways that I can return the ball. And it was enjoyable. And so find something that you're not good at. And enjoy it just for the sake of doing it.

Right. So the being good at it, the accomplishment aspect of it is not the major point, beating somebody else or gaining praise for doing it or, or what have you step outside your comfort zone. And the only way to enjoy it is to really let go of any of the you know, recognize feelings that come up, I have to be better, I have to do good at this, I have to appear this way to somebody really let go of that, as best you can recognize that when it comes up. Which leads me to my hopefully second piece of practical advice. And that is to sit with and welcome your feelings as they come up as best you can. And again, this, this is something that comes from the Sedona Method, I highly suggest reading the book can be had on Amazon or anywhere. And I think it's really inexpensive. And you can find us copies, it's been out for a long time. I've given away a ton of copies of the Sedona Method. And it really teaches you a bunch of methods for releasing emotional energy, amongst other things. So you know, let me, I'll tell you a short story. To give you an example of how I have used this. So was a number of years ago, I was less used to being in the public eye. I you know, hadn't done a lot of radio or TV or anything like that. And I got a call that they wanted me to go on live TV. And it was going to happen in an interview setting in a studio in a TV studio. And I had, I think under an hour to get to the studio go through makeup and they were going on the air. So no prep time whatsoever. And it was nerve wracking to say the least. Nowadays I'm much more used to being in the public eye. I enjoy public speaking I do you know podcasts and radio shows and regularly do stuff over zoom and I've been on TV and so it's it's not as big a deal because i've i've got experience with it. But I just remember this was you know, this was like oh my god nerve wracking, you know, sweating and trembling a little bit. And so I just, you know, I sat in, you know what they call the green room, which is the room you wait in before they bring you into the studio. And having gone through makeup, and trying not to sweat off. And, and so I just sat and I closed my eyes. And I just welcomed whatever I was feeling. feeling fear, I welcome it, and just experience that just go into it mentally go into it and into the body, feel what you're feeling. And what I found is that it would dissipate. And over the years, what I've learned is that emotions come in waves, right? And we, when we try to push them away, what happens is we hold the peak of emotional experience in place, we don't allow that wave to crash. physiologically, there's, you know, this, our nervous system is ramping up, and then it might ramp down and then, you know, hormones released, and then they, you know, they stopped the release for a short period of time, and then they get cleared out of the system, particularly adrenalin. Um, but if you push against that, if you push against that feeling, and try to push it away, your body's like, No, no, you need to feel this, you need to pay attention to this. This is important, don't push this away, I'm going to ramp it up. it persists and it gets worse. And it was Carl Jung who actually said what we resist persists. And that is so true. When we push that away, it holds on and that's true for anything. Anger, you know, grief,

lust, you know, fear all of these, you know, all of these emotions, the more we push them away, the stronger they grow. And so I sat there, and I welcome the feeling. And I just was completely open to it, and I just experienced it. From an observer standpoint. I didn't judge it. I didn't name it. label, it was like, Okay, I'm going to feel what I'm feeling. And go into it with a little bit of a quizzical Hmm, I wonder what this is. without feeling the need to define it, label it or push against it. And what I found was that the emotions, Pete, and they dropped off. And I walked into the studio, and I had a great interview. And friends of mine saw it and called me, Oh, my gosh, I saw you on TV. How did you do so? Well. I was like, I don't know. So, you know, it's a little tough to do that in immediate threat situations in your life, right? If you are walking across the street, and you are about to get hit by a bus, you don't want to close your eyes and go into meditation, that is an appropriate time to feel a fear response and run out of the streets so you don't get hit by a bus. This was not a survival incident. This was not a an incident where I had to react immediately. Or it didn't involve my survival. So I was able to, you know, calm myself down, allow the emotions to subside. Go into my hypnosis voice. And, you know, it did really well. And I was, you know, I felt a sense of accomplishment from having gone through it. You know, it's not to say there wasn't some nervousness during the interview. But from everybody talking to me, it doesn't sound like anybody picked up on it. It doesn't sound like it was visible on the camera. I never got to see it. It was live TV. Unfortunately, I don't think anybody recorded it for me. But, but it was a good experience from from that perspective, and maybe a third piece of advice I was only expected to give you too but as I as I referred to earlier, like I've done a whole bunch of things now in my life on you know, TV, radio, podcasts, video, you know, online streaming video, all kinds of stuff like that, and I just don't, I don't get nervous about that anymore. You know, maybe a little flutter before I teach a class or before I meet with a client for the first time or something along those lines. But I just, you know, just doesn't, doesn't really give me the same reaction that it did you know, when, when the story happened many years ago. And so part of that is, you know, there's a psychological psychological method of treating fears and phobias, which is called extinction. And so what happens is you gradually expose yourself to more and more of the stimulus that causes you to have this reaction. And over time you train yourself not to have this reaction. So the more, the more you and that's part of the you know, find something that you stink at, and go do it and do it just for the enjoyment is that you're going to get used to doing things without the net without social approval, honestly, so it's like a little bit, it's like a little trick for training yourself to do that. And, you know, pushing, pushing your limits a little bit is about that is about slowly, you know, you know, if you're, if you're, if you have a phobia of snakes, for example, you're not going to dive into a pit of Cobras, right? That would not do wonderful things for your fear of snakes. But you might start by looking at a picture of a snake everyday for a week, and then watching a video of a you know, not non venomous, non threatening snake everyday for a week and then looking at, you know, going to a zoo and looking at snakes behind glass

from a distance, you know, and over time, as you slowly increased your exposure, you know, the idea is that there would be an extinction to this phobia. So, I hope that in some small way, I've helped you helped you understand why why we have fears and why it's important for me, personally, and spiritually, and why it's one of my goals, to help people push through, deal with overcome their fears. So they can more fully be, you know, live in their, you know, live from their true self, live from their Divine Self. Not the small self, but the big self, the big s self. Um, I want a world that is full of poetry and dance and art and spiritual healing and love. And not a word that's full of division and playing it safe and smallness, and nobody ever stepping out and being vulnerable. I do highly recommend the works of Bernie Brown. She's got books and videos, and you can catch her talks online. And she talks a whole lot about vulnerability in ways way more articulate than I. So check her out if you get a chance. And will that I will say that I love you. I want you to live your best life. It's important to me it is my mission in this incarnation. And I will talk to you next time.

Announcer 59:37

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 ma i n e s h a m a n.com

Ep22 Ego and Spiritual Identity

Announcer 0:28

Hello, and welcome to speaking spirit where we talk about all things spiritual. Your host, john Moore is a shamanic practitioner and spiritual teacher. And now here's john.

John Moore 0:47

Hello, everybody.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Announcer 51:04

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

Ep21 Manifestation and the Law of Attraction

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 his john.

John Moore 0:45

Everybody it is, per usual when I record these things, morning time. It is an overcast morning here, but I'm watching the Chipmunks I've lots of chipmunks jumping joyously through the through the grass looks like we got some rain last night. And I don't I don't know, maybe they're enjoying the wet grass, or they're hopping about it brings me some joy, love to watch wildlife and birds and all of those sorts of things. Today's topic should be interesting, and I hope very useful. And it's definitely, I mean, everything I talk about is essentially near and dear to my heart. It's something that I care significantly about, it's something I might teach about when I do classes in person or online. And this is something that is important. It's a popular topic, not necessarily why I picked it just for its popularity. But today I'm going to talk about manifestation and the law of attraction, and all things sort of around that. And I hope that I'm going to offer because, gosh, there's a lot of heat around this topic, right? This topic has been popular for decades. Going back, even before the book and movie, The Secret, the secret sort of made it really popular, but there were teachers of law of attraction prior to the secret going back, you know, obviously 1000s of years if you go back to, to ancient magics, and that sort of thing, but sort of from the popular route. We have folks like neville goddard, who think I could be wrong on this, but I think it was active in the 20s 1920. So you know, 100 years ago, you know, there was at least some some interesting information about this that was in on the popular scene. And, you know, on a personal basis, I have you used techniques, I've used spiritual techniques of manifestation to create lots of things in my life. Jobs, you know, relationships. And, you know, money. When I've, when I've, you know, needed some needed some money, it's, it's come along, and I've used techniques that could be considered a law of attraction to do that. So I'm going to talk about that a little bit. I'm going to talk about sort of what it is where people kind of go wrong with it. So I'm going to hopefully give you some really practical information if you've ever struggled to get law of attraction to work as most people have. You know, everybody didn't read the secret and then win the lottery. Right when that be cool, but you know, that that's just not how it works. And I'm also going to talk to you about where it can go wrong a little bit. Right. I have had some things happen that were supposed to, you know, supposed to happen. I think everything is supposed to happen. But were unintended unpleasant consequences of doing manifestation work. So we'll talk all about that today. Now, there are tons and tons of techniques of manifestation. right there's there's the you know, the law of attraction shouldn't work in the secret there's, you know, straight up what we call magic, sometimes spelled with ma gic K and you know, the, the I don't know what you want to call them teacher, author, founder of Salima Alastair Crowley defined magic as change in accordance with Will causing change in accordance with? Well, that's a very broad definition of magic, right? If I stand up and walk over to my refrigerator and grab a pitcher of iced tea and pour myself a glass, did I cause change in accordance with my will? Well, we'd have to define well, but sure, right. And is that is that magic, even though I did it on a physical level. So in essence, everything we do that creates a change, that is intentional, could be considered Well, I mean, could be considered magic can be considered manifestation. So I want to set a little bit of a baseline here and say that,

you know, when we hear the word manifestation or manifesting, in relationship to spirituality, we tend to think about things that are miraculous, you know, you know, I sit down and I pray, and a box of money drops out of the sky into my lap or something. Or I sit down and pray and I'm cured of some disease or what have you. And you know, that true those things would be forms of manifestation. However, I want to explain to you that we are constantly manifesting, we're just not conscious of it. At a very real level, so let me, you know, let me explain. So you're, you're hearing, you know, you're hearing me speak some words, and those words are, you know, maybe creating pictures in your mind, or you're just, you know, in getting the meanings of the words, but are you really hearing me speak, what's happening is some, you know, I'm, on my end, I'm creating some vibrations in the air, with my vocal apparatus, right, with my vocal cords, and my mouth and my tongue. And then those go into a microphone, which translates those vibrations into, into electrical signals, and those electrical signals are being recorded digitally. So that's those are being translated into a series of ones and zeros. And, gosh, a whole bunch of other things happen, you know, they go online, you download them, and sort of a reverse process happens, those ones and zeros are changed into an electrical signal that is, creates vibrations in the air, they hit your eardrums. your eardrums translate those into electrical signals into your brain. And your brain creates words, sentences, meanings, perhaps pictures out of that. So out of this your consciousness, your consciousness is manifesting my words and voice out of thin air out of out of vibrations. That doesn't mean I didn't speak these words, it doesn't mean there's not this reality, but you are, you are creating your internal experience of me speaking these words and anything that you see touch tastes, here, your entire experience of the universe is within your consciousness. Right. we overlook that because we live this on a day to day basis, but that in itself is a miracle, right. Some electrical signals can come in, create some vibrations in the air and your consciousness can experience a symphony. You some you know, electromagnetic waves can strike your retinas in your eyes. And your consciousness can create a sunset or a butterfly or a painting or what have you. So you are creating everything. Everything that you experience you are creating inside your consciousness, you just aren't aware that you're creating it most of the time. Right because our, our what we consider our conscious mind the you know, the awareness, the little voice inside our head, our ego, right or ego which is the little AI that thinks we are separate from the world and not connected to it, separate from the universe and not connected to it. That experience of I tells us that we are separate from the world that the world we're experiencing is objective. And, you know, everything we're, we're the subject and everything we experiences is the object. And we're not, we're not creating any of this, we are experiencing objective reality. But ask two people who witnessed the same thing, the same event to describe it. And you will get two very different descriptions of that, because they have different viewpoints, if different aspects of consciousness, they have different experience, filters, through which everything,

everything comes in. So I think what I want to express fully here is that you are a co Creator of the universe, you are, there's a divine part of you, that is creating your entire experience of the universe. And that is happening. Using this field of attention or field of awareness, we might call consciousness. And you are manifesting constantly, everything you experience, you're just not necessarily doing it. You know, I can, you know, I may or depending upon how flexible I am with my attachment to my ego reality. You know, if I look at I'm holding, you know, holding a cup of coffee here, have a little sip. If I stare at that cup of coffee hard enough, and I play with my brain enough, can I manage it? Can I change that into something else? Can I? You know, what, we might call hallucinate that into something else? And probably I could, um, would I be able to hold, you know, make that stable? Would I be able to turn that into a bag of gold? For example, we'll use an you know, old alchemical thing, can I turn my coffee cup into a bag of gold? and have it stay that way? permanently? Probably not. If I you know, I probably, I'm not saying that's not possible. Because ultimately, ultimately, everything is possible. It's another idea I want to express. Ultimately, everything is possible. And I could hallucinate and I, you know, use that word sort of loosely, because we're constantly hallucinating the outside world. Right? We have no, we have no real idea of what the outside world is actually, like, we just have the ideas that are created in our, our consciousness. Okay. And I'll give you some, I have some examples. And we could break it down into physics and physiology and all kinds of stuff and study it and measure it and do all of these things. ad infinitum. Okay, so I, I studied martial arts for my whole life. And when I was younger, in my, my youth, and up through college, I studied the Japanese martial art, karate, right empty hand way, cut out the dough. And one of the things I might have to do from time to time is to break a board, you know, punch through a board or chop through a board or kick through a board or whatever. Okay. And so, on a conscious level, if I aimed my fist to say I was punching, to break a board, but aimed my fist at the surface of the board, my body and everything else aligned with that would not you know, we'd pull back or stop, or, you know, however it worked out, it would not break the board, and it would probably hurt my hand pretty badly. But if I was able to, and this is the real, this is the real reason why they break boards in martial arts, if I was able to focus through the board, as if the board was not there. My fist could pass through it relatively effortlessly. You know, yes, I would have to punch it, I would have to hit it pretty hard. You have to use proper technique. All of those things are important. But the most important thing was the change in consciousness, the change in focus and attention that's required to do that. And there's, you know, there is you know, there's all kinds of things we do to train that to hit through a target, and that sort of thing. So that's the secret. Don't go out punch boards without learning the proper techniques. Please. But yeah, proper technique is important. But even with proper technique if you don't have the correct, so proper technique, the physical aspect, and then just proper technique, the mental, emotional, spiritual aspects. So I want to recognize that we are beings of pure spirit that are expressed in physical reality, I'm not going to say that physical reality isn't real. But our experience of physical reality comes 100% through our consciousness. And I'm using that term over and over again, consciousness awareness.

And how much of that? You know, the question is, how much are we passive receivers? And how much control do we have over that? So, on one level, we have a mind, we have a body, we have a spirit with soul, we make all of these different layers of, you know, layers of ourselves, right? And, you know, our mind, we're able to experience thoughts, we're able to experience emotions, feelings, feelings happen in our body, and our mind. And all of these things, there's a lot of crossover, right? Where does our mind and in our body start, and vice versa. And as science learns more, we find, you know, things like neuro peptides and in lots of cells in the body, and they talk about the gut being the second brain of the body, and most serotonin is produced in the gut area and not in the brain. So you know, that these things, these, you know, this overlap between mind and body grows, every day with the more that the more that we learn. So one of the things about manifestation for me is that I find that it works better. When all of our parts are in alignment and working together, meaning our body, mind and spirit are doing the same thing. Just like in karate class, when you learn to punch through a board. Okay, now I could maybe, I don't know, I've never been able to do this, but develop telekinetic powers, and sit there and use just my mind to break a board. I don't know, I think anything is possible, but I've yet to be able to do that. useful skill, if I could do something like that, you know, I wouldn't have to reach for the TV remote. If it was too far away, I could just move it move it with my mind. And, you know, have there been people in history who have been able to do these miracle things, you know, just think something and produce some effect? physical effect out of thin air? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I believe that for sure. You know, we hear all of these stories of different types of miracles. And but I don't think it's just a mental thing. I don't think it's straight up mental energy, I think, um, you know, mental energy combined with spiritual and some level of physical energy working together, creates the greatest impact. I often talk about human beings, because we're complex systems of we're systems of systems. I'll use a car analogy pretty frequently. Because Because it's helpful and and, you know, even if you don't own a car and don't know, necessarily how internal combustion engines work, you can, you can, you've had some experience and can can understand what I'm talking about. So let's say I want to get from, you know, I want to get from the state of Maine where I am now, which is in the north, far northeast of the continental United States. And I want to drive to Southern California, a trip of approximately 3000 miles in my car. Okay, so my navigation system works, right? I've got you know, I've got a good GPS system, and it works and it's got everything mapped out in my car. But I don't turn the car on. I don't start the engine. And I just sit in my car and stare at the navigation system. That's probably not going to work for me, right? And so I've got to get, you know, I've got to turn turn the engine on, and actually use the navigation system to drive across the country. Well, let's say that my tires are no good, right? No tread on the tires. And you know, one of them is going to give out in 100 miles or so am I going to get to where I'm going? Well, probably not. Because, you know, again, there's, there's another system that's not working in the same way. So even even in martial arts, and in, you know, in the karate analogy, I can have my entire body going in the same direction moving towards a target to break a board.

But if I turn my eyes in a different direction, as I'm doing that, if I'm not looking through the target, it's not going to work. It's a weird thing have demonstrated this to students with, not with having them hurt themselves on a board, but with different different techniques. When I've been teaching, I'm like, Okay, do this, now just turn your eyes in a different direction. Um, and the energy just changes and the technique becomes weaker. And because there's no focus there. So my point is to truly manifest things to truly get things to work, we want to get all of our systems working together. We want to get body mind and spirit working together. And I realize that many people's ideas of miracles or manifestation, have to do with stuff just happening without, without doing without physical interaction. And that is, that is true. And that does happen. I'm just saying, in the beginning, it requires a lot of discipline, efforts, focus, that sort of thing. So give yourself a little, you give yourself a little advantage. By taking we're called divine action or inspired action. In the beginning, so many people think law of attraction is about sitting on the couch and thinking real hard and a box of money dropping into your lap. And again, that's possible, it's very possible. Is it probable, no. So what we want to do is increase the probability of what you want to manifest. So I'll give you an example of a time when I was looking for work, and I was looking for I was looking for a job and I wanted to have a, I want to have a good job. And I had certain criteria, it had to have certain types of benefits and all this, it was very, very specific. And, you know, I went out and I tried just the physical route, right? I sent out 200 resumes and contacted all these companies, and nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing happened for months. close to four months, maybe. I don't know if it was the economy, or, you know, whatever, my resume was terrible, I didn't change my resume. So, you know, and I'm getting more and more frustrated, I'm trying to force things and then I remembered my manifestation work that I'd done years before and worked on getting into a state of allowing this to happen. And within a couple of weeks, I had gotten four job offers, um, two of which I had to, you know, wound up being close enough that I had to decide between two of them. They both had amazing benefits. One of them was more money than I ever made in my life and more, but it was what I intended. So intention is key here, what I intended to manifest and so so I accepted it and took that job. So what happened was I got into a space of allowing, I used some of the techniques, but I had also taken physical action. In other words, when and they will also say that all of these companies came to me I didn't apply. I didn't apply actually apply to any of them. They all came came kind of Looking to me through, you know, online sources or whatever. And, you know, it was amazing because I, I, as things started to align, I sort of said, I would like to get four offers, I got four offers, I would like to get an, you know, an offer of at least this much, I got an offer of that much I would like to have these benefits and, and received those benefits.

But it didn't happen until I sort of let go, but I did have to, you know, obviously, when they contacted me, I had to take some physical actions, I had to respond or, or they, it wouldn't have happened, you know, I had to send my resume I had to interview has to do all of those things. I had to take all those follow up actions. But it started with my intention. And it started with letting go. And I will give you, you know, I don't know if this is a technique, you know, or not, but I will, I will give you a technique that I use sometimes when I'm trying to manifest things that works. It works wonderfully for me. So I, I sit in and I think about I think about the thing that I want to manifest, let's say it's in, you know, it's a job, let's say, um, and I will say to myself, remember when I got that job, and I will imagine that I got the job in the past that I already have, what it is that I'm trying to manifest. And how and then I asked myself, how did I feel when I got that? How did I feel when that manifested. And that that little technique I find really aligns mind and spirit in the spirit world, time is really flexible. Time is really our experience of time is really attached to matter. You know, and so, in, in a non material, non material world time is sort of loosey goosey, very flexible. So, again, I think this is you know, part of law of attraction is you have to act as if you have already or, you know, imagine or generate the feelings of in the feeling is important, the emotion is important of already having the thing that you're trying to manifest. Remember, when that's the, that's the technique that I used. Remember, when I got those four job offers, and how did that feel, and I imagined, made up a little story scenario in my head felt really good. Now imagine when one of those offers, remember when one of those offers was this much money and you accepted it. And then I, you know, I go in and imagine that and then release attachment to the outcome. That's a big step. Attachment tends to push things away a little bit. So let me give you a couple of hints and a couple of caveats when it comes to manifestation and law of attraction. So, one hint that, you know, when I've worked with students, or I've worked with people on a mentoring or coaching basis, and they're working on manifesting stuff, is that need to allow the universe to work out the details of what you're manifesting. Um, you don't need to, but if you do, it's going to happen quicker in ordinary reality, and it's going to be easier. I'll give you an example. Let's say that I wanted to manifest 100,000 US dollars. And I say, I will receive a check from the bank for 100,000 US dollars on Tuesday, in June on you know, such and such a day at you know, 345 in the afternoon. And, um, you know, the reason I'm going to get it is this and that and this and that when all I really want to do is manifest $100,000 so better intention is you know, remember when I received $100,000 out of the blue unexpectedly. And you you know, the spiritual teacher Lester Levinson used to say let go and learn God, you make your intention and you let go and let God I'll use the term the universe because I think that the word God can be sort of loaded. But I'm talking about the same thing, the all pervading consciousness, and manifester of the universe, god or goddess or the universe. Um, when we let go of the details, things manifest easier, because if you think about all of the things that have to happen,

the universe will follow kind of a path of least resistance, right. So every condition you put on something creates more resistance. And this is not, doesn't create resistance in the universe, but it creates resistance in your ego in your interface, like, becomes less and less possible for you. You know, unless you completely undo all of your conditioning, from the time you were born, until now, every condition you place on something you're trying to manifest will make it more challenging for you. Not to say that it isn't possible. Again, everything is possible, everything is possible in consciousness, you could get that check from the bank for $100,000, on Tuesday. And the reason could be the bank, you won an award at the bank or something, something something something. The problem is, if any of those things, if you don't perceive any of those things as being true, like the bank doesn't have an award, the bank doesn't hand out $100,000 checks just at random, that sort of thing. Again, you're not getting your body, mind and spirit into alignment, your belief is not going to get to be there. So that being said, you can manifest, it is possible to manifest very specific things, very, very specific things. Um, I'll give you an example of a caveat though. So here's, you know, here's, here's something from my own life. So I had a relationship with someone I knew this person, they were my friends. They were, well, I won't get, I won't get into more detail than that, because they don't want to, I don't want to give away an identity or anything like that. But I knew I had a, there was a woman who was who was a good friend of mine, and I'd become single again, and I wanted to have a relationship with this person, she was I found her attractive and intelligent. And we had very similar ideas about spirituality, and similar practices, and, and all of these things, and I'm like, I am going to manifest a, you know, a love relationship with this person. And boy, did I, you know, I'm head over heels in love. We moved in together for a short period of time. But the relationship was a disaster, the relationship was tumultuous. This person had what I think is a very severe undiagnosed mental illness. One that is sort of easy to easy to hide sometimes, but, you know, then comes out in relationships and just ended horribly, disastrously kind of messed up my life for a period of time as well. Right? Because what I didn't manifest was I didn't manifest a loving, kind, wonderful relationship, what I manifested was I want a love relationship with this specific person. And you know, so, you know, it happened and it was an important thing for me to learn to, to understand to learn about the power of these things. So, one has to be careful when manifesting about being really specific about things and you can manifest something specific but you know, it might not have intended consequences. You know, and we can always tack on for the highest good to our intention right for everyone's highest Good. I would like to manifest $100,000 in a way that is for my highest good. You know, and maybe this relationship was for my highest good, maybe I needed to learn something about trust and boundaries and that sort of thing. But that being said, you know, so the tip then is to,

really, like, if you're trying to manifest something, Uber specific, and you're trying to control the details of how it's manifested. That's, that's very egoic. And the ego is the part of you that doubts manifestation happens, that doesn't think you're creating the universe every second of every day. That's your ego that says, You're separate from the world, that you're not connected to everything. And, you know, the ego is not evil, it's just not necessarily correct. And everybody has an ego, I don't care how enlightened you are, you still have an experience of the eye as a separate being, you might have more of an experience of, of non duality, of interconnectedness, that can, that can sure happen. But I don't think the sense of AI as a separate self goes away. While you exist in a physical body, but you have a physical body. Even you know, you might not identify with the ego as much. And that's kind of a weird thing, right? identifying, you identify as the separate self, because the thing ultimately, it's, you know, I'm getting a little deep here, but ultimately, it's the consciousness that provides the identity of who you are. And so moving towards spiritual wholeness and spiritual alignment, alignment, and I don't necessarily like to use the word enlightenment, because that has very different meanings for very for different people. And in some worlds that has a very technical meaning. So I could potentially be using this word wrong, but moving towards enlightenment, part of that is, dis identifying with the ego. So you understand you have an ego. And some people don't understand that they have an ego, but first you understand you have an ego, you have a sense of I as a separate self, but then you dis identify from that, you say that sense of I is not who I am. I have a sense of I, but I am not the sense of I am the thing that perceives the sense of I am the conscious field that proceeds the sense of I, I have a physical body, but I am not the physical body. I am the field of consciousness that perceives the person, the physical body, I have a mind and I have emotions, and I have thoughts, but I am none of those things. I am a field of consciousness that perceives those things. So the more you identify with what we'll call beingness, beingness is that field of consciousness that just exists. Your sense of existence, not as a separate self, just as, as being, the more you identify with that the easier manifestation becomes, because you're not as tied to the ego as a separate self. And the ego as a separate self is the part of, you know, has been trained since birth that, you know, magic and miracles, you know, happen, maybe they maybe you were taught from birth, that they don't happen, that they're not possible. And that's the thing too, right. So all of these beliefs are tied up with the ego. Everything that you hold to be true. Even if you look at your hand in front of your face, and you say, this hand exists because I can see it that's a belief. It may be true. But your experience of that as truth is a belief. Once we start breaking these things down and dis identifying manifestation becomes more effortless. The more we identify with the ego, the more we say, I am a separate self, completely separated from the universe. And I am just a receiver of the world as it is around me instead of a creator. You know, instead of the entire world that I experience existing inside my consciousness, the more I identify with the ego, the the

more challenging, you will, the more challenges you will experience when trying to manifest or use law of attraction or perform miracles or perform real magic change in the universe according to will,

on a, on a very real level, you are, you know, as a, you know, as a separate self, you are a spark of divinity, you have this spark of divinity within you, I shouldn't say you are I should say you have the spark of divinity within you. So, you are a co Creator of the universe. The more you understand that the more you identify, we identify with being this and identify that you have this divine spark and that you are not separate from God, the universe, the creator, the field of consciousness. Brahman in Sanskrit, right in some, in some traditions, some advisory traditions, they say Atman is Brahman. So Atman is the individual soul and Brahman is the over soul of the universe. And in some traditions, they say, there is no difference. And I honestly believe that I do believe that I've had some experience with that, that we are not separate, that we are all connected, we are all one. So you know, just to just to wrap up, you know, remember to get ego out of the way a little bit, as much as you can. So as much as you can identify with consciousness. Get body, mind and spirit in alignments take divine inspired action, if you know. And again, manifestation isn't about necessarily doing nothing, it's just recognizing that doing is happening. And that doing is in alignment with, with being and having you know, that it could be a little confusing, I understand, being doing and having, you can't stop being, you can stop doing and you can stop having, but you can't stop being. So start from the place of being identify with your beingness identify with your existence, understand that the quality of your existence has consciousness or the ability to perceive to be able to pay it, you know, have attention is sort of volitional consciousness where you place your intent, attention. And where attention goes energy flows. So wherever you place your attention, that's where your energy is going to go again, there's the the, you know, the karate analogy, focus through the target and the target it's almost like the target isn't there, the board break the board as much as you can get the ego out of the way. You do that by identifying with beingness by identifying is the field of consciousness that you are and then you can play the remember when game remember when suddenly $100,000 came to me, how did I feel when that happened? and generate those feelings inside your field of consciousness that sort of aligns everything that makes you know, it's sort of like you know, clearing the tracks clearing the train tracks so the train can pass past you know, unimpeded. So that's those are my hints and and caveats and little You know, technique for law, law of attraction work. It's important stuff. And it might seem mundane. But it's important to understand why we manifest when we focus on manifesting beyond the fact that I'm going to get stuff, I'm going to get stuff I want, I'm going to have a life that's comfortable, and happy and have everything I want and be rich and whatever. Beyond that, because those are all worldly concerns. And all of those things, relationships, everything else are temporary, everything is temporary. Right? What does not temporary, anything that is not temporary is your beingness. Is that

when you manifest, you're demonstrating to yourself to all parts of yourself that yes, you are your beingness Yes, you're a conscious co creator, and an intimate part of this universe. And that is a direct experience of spiritual truth. There are lots of ways to directly experience spiritual truth, this is one of them happens to be an important one. This is a return to your divinity. This is a movement again, away from ego. Again, it's a movement away from identifying with the small eye, the small eye, which is our sense of maybe I am the body, maybe I'm really identified with my body, or maybe I'm really identified with my thoughts. Both of those things are super temporary. How long does the thought last? Right? How often does our body change and someday, we will die and her body will go back to the earth or maybe we get cremated or, or what have you, but the body components will be broken down. But that essential, immortal part of you. That is divine. That's the that's the important part to identify with. And doing manifestation work. Helps that along. It's a lesson that you probably if you are listening to this podcast and you're trying to do these things, it's a lesson that you're here to learn. You're here to learn how how you are a co creator, how you how you are part of divinity split off just so divinity can experience things and learn and grow. So with that, I hope that you'll take some of this to heart I hope that you'll practice I hope that you'll manifest great things. Contact me contact me through my website, which is main ma i n e, shaman sh a ma n.com. If you have any questions for topics you would like me to talk about in a future podcast. I would be happy to do that. I would like to get back to having some guests. take a short break from that for a period of time. But we'll have some more guests because I think it's fantastic to have some different perspectives out there. Anyway, I love you all. I wish you well and we'll talk to you next time.

Announcer 49:34

You have been listening to speaking spirit with your host, John Moore. For more info or to contact john go to MaineShaman.com that's ma i n e s h a m a n.com

Ep19 Sex Positive Spirituality

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 0:49

Hello, everybody.

It's been a little while since I've been able to record a podcast for you, I'm happy to do so. may sound a little weird, but I miss you all. But it's been too long since I've done this, I do enjoy doing these, if you can't tell, I hope you can tell that I enjoy doing these. One of the things I love to do, from an kind of a nerdy perspective is I like to look at the data on where my listeners are, where people are downloading and listening to this podcast. And, gosh, I think it's something like 30 different countries at this point. So I welcome you wherever you are in the world. makes me really happy to be able to talk to so many people this way. And I do love to hear back from you. And, you know, you can contact me through my website, it's probably the easiest way. And there's definitely information there. And at the end of the podcast, I always have you know, the announcer comes on and talks about my URL and my website and where where I'm at. So today, it's a beautiful morning, as I record this, I'm looking out Spring has definitely sprung The trees are not quite yet fully. What what how do you call that in in leaved, the leaves are not fully out on the on the trees yet, but they're all they're all budding. And that's beautiful. And the the animals around here are very active, the birds are crazy, I feed the birds and the small animals in my area. And so we are, we're well into spring here, days or days or longer. We're getting warmer weather. Most of the time, I can go outside without a coat. And that is a wonderful thing. Up here in Maine where I am, if you don't know where Maine is in the US, we're pretty north. And we're, in fact we're about as far north as you can get in the continental US not, we don't you know, Alaska is its own thing. It's not attached to the the main part of the country so that it's farther north. But as far as the 48, what they call lower states go, we're about as far north as you can get. And as far east as you can get syrup in the if you're looking at a map of the United States, we're up in the upper right hand corner. Anyway, today, I'm going to talk about sex. Wow, how can I talk about sex, and a podcast about spirituality. And depending on who you are and how you were raised, those things might seem somewhat contradictory sex and spirituality. But I want to talk about them extremely important topics and extremely important to look at them, I think, together and where we are and where we've come from. And I will put things in the context of where I come from. And I mentioned today that I'm from Maine, and I mentioned where it is, and that's an important factor here. And the reason is, the reason that's important, where I'm from, you know, where I'm from isn't important, but but it is in the context of this conversation. Because I grew up in an area of the United States called the New England and New England was is famous for being settled by Puritans, amongst many other people later on, but are originally settled the European people that came over here, many of them were puritanical. They were escaping religious prosecution from England, and you know, came over some via the Netherlands, there's a whole mixture of story there. But anyway, the Puritans obviously has the word the name pure in it, and I am on my actually on both sides of my family descended from Puritan stock. So my family's have been here since the 1600s. And passed down a lot of ancestral baggage, we'll put it that way, a lot of ancestral karma, a lot of ancestral wounding. And the word Puritan has the word pure in it, does it not. And, interestingly, the Puritans were essentially Calvinists. And to sort of break down the worldview there.

You know, to reduce it in very simple terms, um, pleasure, anything that you derive pleasure from was almost seen as sinful. So things like dancing, gambling, definitely sex, although, you know, certainly sex was seen as necessary for reproduction. And there are stories of infidelity in the early colonies. And you know, The Scarlet Letter letter, if you're familiar with that story was written about the Puritans, although it's it's fiction, it didn't, didn't actually happen. But certainly people could be punished for sexual, you know, sexual things for sexual sex crimes. And not I'm not talking about the sex crimes we have today, talking about like, adultery, or fornication, or, you know, things that were outside the prescribed sexual norms given by the church at the time. And we certainly had, you know, gave rise, you know, all of this sort of religious fervor, gave rise to the witch trials in, in Massachusetts, and, you know, I did have a, an ancestor who was arrested as a witch, but survived. By the time the, you know, there's a whole long, whole long story about that, about how, you know, somebody basically bought her, bought her freedom, I guess. And then the witch trials, people came to their senses eventually. So, I want to talk about how sex and spirituality can coincide in a positive way. And I'm going to differentiate a little bit, spirituality, and religion. And they can be the same thing, you may be a religious person. And one of the, you know, one of the things about religion, that may be different from spirituality for people who describes themselves as spiritual but not religious, is that religion tends to place rules, there tends to be dogma, right, there tends to be an organization that puts certain rules in place, and you have to follow these rules or there may be there may be punishment. Or there may, you know, you may have to follow these rules to get the reward would whatever that is, right. So, in Christianity, for example, you get to go to heaven. If you follow the rules, or in some belief systems, you go to hell, you're punished for all eternity if you don't follow the rules. And those rules certainly can be applied to sex quite a bit. Right. Lots and lots of rules about sex in the Bible. However, I do want to point out that there is a there's a lot of interpretation, there's a lot of interpretation. And you can see that the rules changed throughout the years. If you look at if you look at history, so um, my personal position as a person who is spiritual but not necessarily religious, as somebody who practices spirituality, on a professional level, I guess, for lack of a better term. You know, I practice shamanism. I am a shamanic healer, I see. People you know, I advise people. My personal position on sex is that any sexual activity between adults, that is consensual is fine. And consent is the key. Right? And I also mentioned the word adults. You know, in our culture, children cannot consent. You know, children are not legally able to give consent. And, you know, even if they agree to activity,

technically doesn't matter. And same thing for people who are, you know, maybe mentally disabled or under the influence of certain substances, you know, they're not, you know, they're technically not able to give consent. So consent, consent is key consensual activity is the key, non consensual activity is never okay. And that's really it. For me, that's really where I draw the line. Other than that, any sexual activity is, is fine. It's totally fine. And in fact, many, you know, one of the things I want to talk about today is how sex can be part of your spiritual practice, and can deepen your spiritual practice, and can enhance and can, you know, bring joy to your spiritual practice. So, you know, I'm not going to talk about the range of sexual activity, because there are, you know, that could be a series of podcasts in itself. But I do want to talk about it from a spiritual perspective. You know, most people even in the West, were familiar with things like Tantra and the Kama Sutra and the, you know, that the temple carvings in India depicting all these different sex acts, for example, right sexual positions, ways of raising energy. So there is at least one tradition, where sex was seen as sacred as a sacred act. Um, but if you look, and you could do some, you could do a little bit of research, even go to, I was looking earlier, as I was getting ready for this podcast. I was looking through Wikipedia, on the practice of sacred prostitution, for example, which is, exists in history, all over the world. Almost every culture, almost every culture has this idea of sacred sex workers. And not all of them are female. There are male, male sex workers as well listed in some of these cultures. And it was considered a sacred act to have sex in a you know, in a temple. You know, maybe, for example, a temple to Aphrodite. Or, you know, we see it in sumur. We see it in Babylon. We see it in Asia, certainly, lots of places in Asia, we see it in Mesoamerica. So, there is something pre Abrahamic religions right before the, you know, before Christianity, Islam and Judaism sort of took over a lot of the planet. There is a tradition of sacred sexual activity. In fact, special temples sometimes built for that purpose. So what's going on here? Why, why is that the case? Why is sex such a taboo in some cultures? So, anyway, I grew up in this, you know, I'm gonna go back to my upbringing and where I grew up, so I grew up in this new england culture, where even today I feel like we're still suffering from our puritanical past, though that be more than 400 years ago now. I feel like you know, particularly me growing up even though I was growing up in the middle of the what was considered the sexual revolution, and, you know, sex started to be talked about on television and the radio and songs. Songs are becoming more explicit in our culture in Western culture anyway. Um, even though that was happening, I still grew up in a culture where sex was something that was whispered about it was hidden, it was in the shadows it was, you know, there was certainly a lot of it going around. And then this is what happens when something is seen as shameful when something natural, something that can be beautiful, something that we all have the impulse for. is pushed into the shadows, it becomes a shadow activity becomes perverted, and I don't mean sexually perverted. I mean, it becomes this impulse becomes perverted comes in the wrong direction. So there becomes a lot of

sex crimes against children, we see that in religious institutions that enforced celibacy, for example. Um, and my personal opinion, my, you know, my personal opinion on that I'm not bashing anybody's particular religious belief for or practice, you know, I'm not trying to do that, but I do think that enforced celibacy is unnatural. Some people consider themselves asexual, and that's totally fine, too, that's a fine choice as well. If that's your choice, if that's how you feel, if that's honestly, you have no sexual impulse. I don't necessarily think that people with you take somebody with healthy normal sexual impulse, and you say, guess what, you're not gonna have an outlet for that for the rest of your life. And just pray that away. Um, I think that it's a little bit of a recipe for disaster. And I think, again, it pushes, I've talked about the shadow quite a lot, I will continue to talk about the shadow, it pushes those impulses into the shadow. And if you do not have a way, a proper way of dealing with that, it's going to come out in a way that is unexpected, uncontrolled, you know, and perhaps victimizes other people. I think there are, I think there are very good practices out there. I think mostly coming from the east, what we consider the east, you know, there are tantric practices, not necessarily tantric sex, but tantric practices of converting sexual energy into, you know, other forms of spiritual energy. I think there are ways of doing that. But I think the you know, when that's missing, when that outlet is missing, when that way of converting that energy to something else, and it's just pushed into the shadow and not acknowledged that, gosh, I'm a human being. That's, you know, that's a recipe for disaster. And we've seen that we've seen that with, you know, perhaps millions of cases of child sexual abuse, millions. That's mind boggling to me. Absolutely. Crazy. To me. And again, you go back to consent, and adults, and children can't consent. And, um, you know, it just, it's just not okay. So there's something you know, there's something definitely going on here. There's an elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about. And that is, I think, forced celibacy, or enforced celibacy. Nobody seems to be talking about that aspect of the of the clergy child sex abuse problem. So anyway, I digress. I do want to talk more about sacred sexuality and sexual sexuality and spirituality and how they can sort of live hand in hand. So again, going back to where, where I grew up, you know, there's this underlying idea that sex is specifically for procreation for making babies. And that should only be done with the person that you marry. And if you're not married, sex is wrong in the eyes of God. So, you know, for the, you know, most of human existence prior to prior to organized religion, there was no marriage. Right? I mean, people may have coupled, but there wasn't, you know, there weren't churches, there weren't all of this thing. So, you know, well, I think marriage is a fine and grand institution.

Um, I think there's a lot of, you know, we have greater than 50% divorce rate in the United States, for example. So maybe it's not all it's cracked up to be. And yes, sex can lead to children being born. And it is the main way until we invented, you know, modern until modern science came along and invented other ways of, you know, in vitro fertilization and things like that it, I mean, it is still the main way that babies are created. And so it's very easy to look at that and, you know, slap on the, the idea that, okay, the the only purpose of sex is to make new babies. But that ignores a whole range of the human experience. Right? It ignores the idea that sexual activity, releases positive hormones releases hormones that make us feel good, it triggers our reward system. And, you know, again, you could you could be single minded and argue that this is an impulse towards making, you know, making children, right, or our species needs to reproduce. And so, you know, we evolved to have, you know, to derive pleasure and to release stress, and all of these, you know, all of the positive things. In medical science knows that, you know, regular sex or sexual activity is, is good for you, it's, you know, it's stress relieving, it has good effects on blood pressure, and all kinds of things. And so, you know, it's a very healthy activity. I like to look at things from several perspectives from, you know, really simply from a body mind spirit perspective, right? If we were just to divide human experience into these three areas. Okay, so body we talked about that there's, you know, sex has a physical effects that's positive on your body, gave great hormones that come out from sexual activity, lower blood pressure, all kinds of great physiological things happen to you. I'm sorry, about the mind aspect, right. So when we relieve stress through sexual activity, or we become closer with somebody or, you know, all you know, all of these things, again, you could have you can, you can have sex and just a physical level and not have that emotional, mental connection with somebody. But you may be missing an aspect. And that's fine. Again, I'm not going to judge. I'm not going to, I'm not going to judge anybody for any consensual activity. I'm just saying that sex can can be. Sex can be a mind body spirit experience, you can have a transcendent spiritual experience during sexual activity. This could include a partner and it could be so low as well. Or it could include more than one partner again, I don't judge activity that's consensual. So when I talk about solo activity, I talked about masturbation, for example. You could certainly have that have a mind body spirit experience. And again, to go back to practices like Tantra, which are about sort of transforming spiritual energy into spiritual energy. And, you know, there's a whole there's a whole science there, you know, whole, lots and lots of I am not an expert in Tantra. I've, you know, looked at it briefly, but there there's a whole, you know, whole experience there. from, from a shamanic perspective you know, there, there is a merging, so I'm just talking about sex with a partner. Now, there's a merging of energy. And if the experience is positive for for both individuals, and I would argue that you should be

should is shoulds a tough word because it implies a judgement but it's not really a judgement here. I'm just saying if you want to get the most out of sexual experience, if you want to have a mind body experience, mind body spirit experience when it here's an insider tip when both people win, if you're having experience with one other person, when both are dedicated to an intent on the other person having the maximum experience, there's a melding of energy, there is a, you know, you are as close as you can be to another human being, you are really experiencing the other person's energy field. And you can grow both energy fields that way. Both people can come out of the experience, feeling satisfied feeling, you know, peaceful but energized, feeling fulfilled. And that's, you know, that's a pretty amazing spiritual experience to me. That's when, when sex can become spiritual, at least in my experience. And when you can also have experiences with people and we've maybe we've all experienced this at some point in our life, where one person is not necessarily when one person is more of a taker, or one person is more just along for the ride, or that sort of thing. And that experience is I can tell you not as satisfying as both people being intently into the moment, there's a mindfulness piece, where you can be just completely absorbed in the present moment. And it can become a transcendent experience so sex can become a transcendent experience. So let's talk about the concept of sex and sin for a moment. Because there is no shortage of religious dogma that is placing certain activities and sex within the realm of sin. And sin is a weird word. Right, the roots of the word sin in means to like miss it. At one point meant like to miss your mark, like an archer missing a target that they were shooting for you kind of you kind of messed up. You kind of missed your mark. But also we have the word like, you know, from Western religion perspective, we have the word abomination creeping in a lot, as well. This is an abomination. So you you have offended, you have offended God. Right? You've done something that offends God. And again, I don't want to bash on anybody's personal beliefs. But, you know, one of the reasons why I consider myself spiritual but not religious, is that I find it challenging to imagine an omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, loving God, that is everywhere. And everything that could be offended by something. Like a fence. Like I think we're anthropomorphizing I think we're placing, I think we're honestly writing down some rules, and we want to, you know, back before we had, you know, law enforcement investigation, and we use the threat of hell to keep people in line. And that's really all I'll kind of say about that. And some of these rules, you know, if you read if you read the Bible, and you read, you know, all of the rules that were written down that are you know, practiced by some observant people, even today many of them were made sense at the time right so prohibitions against pork and shellfish for example. In the in the Bible, or you know in in Leviticus Anyway, um you know, back in the day those were unsafe foods, you know, pork, you know, you get trichinosis from and shellfish you know, certainly to get bacterial infections from and so those were those were, you know, health guidelines.

And, you know, it made sense in the days before religion, you know, refrigeration I'ma said religious ration refrigeration, and, you know, in health inspections and all of those things, right. I think prohibition against sexual activity. Were there there were a couple of reasons for those in sort of most cultures, religious systems, I'm not just talking about, you know, the Abrahamic religions. One was that, throughout history there, you know, sexually transmitted diseases were rampant. Right. Throughout most of history, we didn't have a way of treating those. So, you know, you know, we can look at all sorts of, you know, syphilis outbreaks throughout history, and all kinds of stuff like that. So I think these things were, you know, women had to be a virgin when they were married, and that sort of thing. I think a lot of that actually, was to control sexually transmitted diseases, one aspect. So there's, there's a lot of talk about, there's a lot of description of, you know, women who are virgins being clean, clean or unclean? Right, very simplistic view of potentially potentially carrying disease, right. And, of course, of course, the emphasis was placed on women. Of course, it was because we were living in a patriarchy. So of course, you know, we were living in a patriarchy, we're living in a patriarchal system, meaning we have to put all this pressure on women, and push women down, and all of those things, so. So I think that was one reason, I think, I think a second reason why sexual prohibitions in many religious systems came about was that marriage and children were a way of exchanging property and having sort of lead, you know, passing property down through, you know, from generation to generation and property rights were frequently passed through males and all of this thing. And so if you, you know, if you had children out of wedlock, and, you know, it made decisions about where property went. Much more complicated, right. So I think that was a second reason. And I think, I honestly think a third reason is that, you know, there were these temples were ecstatic sexual practice was performed, right. And, you know, that put a lot of power in the hands of women. It put a lot of power in. And males who were maybe practicing homosexuality, in these temples, there were there were temples where there were homosexual prostitutes, and prostitutes, an interesting word they may or may not have been paid, it might have just been a sacred service. I don't, you know, there's a lot of debate about that still, in academic circles, circles, I haven't studied it academically, so I can't speak to that. So. So there's a lot of power there. A lot of spiritual power. In, in sex, right? In static states, there's a lot of power. And so there are a lot of prohibitions around that. There are a lot of powerful people wanting to maintain power. So you got to remember that patriarchal systems are a big pyramid scheme, where you have very few people on top, and a whole lot of people on the bottom, a whole lot of people on the bottom, right, very, very wealthy, powerful people on top, and a whole lot of poor people to keep those wealthy people on top. It used to be so for example, one small example in the Christian world. All you know, there was a point in time where all Bibles were written in Latin.

And it was illegal in some places, in many places, to own a Bible that was printed in a language that could be spoken by the common people. So that only the privileged clergy who were, you know, educated enough to read and understand Latin To understand, could understand the Bible could read and understand the Bible, you had to go to them for everything. Mass was said in Latin up until, I don't know, the 60s or the 70s. In the United States. So people went to church and didn't even understand what was being said, I don't quite understand that myself, to be honest, other than other than you had to, you know, it's like, it's, you know, I don't know why Latin was considered that. Well, I know why. But anyway, so power was kept out of the hands of the people. And I think it's the same. So I think that is a third reason why sexual activity was so proscribed. So you know, seen as sinful outside of certain allowable situations, one in particular, being married and making babies. Right, you get a whole lot of people at the bottom of the ladder, you know, a whole lot of people at the bottom of the pyramid. So get married, and have babies and be good workers. Because the very wealthy people, which are, you know, the six people at the top of the pyramid need your labor to live in luxury? Yeah, I understand. That's pretty cynical. I'm pretty cynical. But you know, that's my take on patriarchy in general. You know, it's a power, it's a power system that we've been living in for 1000s of years, and it can be challenging to see it because it informs everything about our culture, it's like a fish swimming in the ocean is probably not aware of water, right? We're most of the time, maybe not aware of the atmosphere we live in, if it were gone, we sure would be. Or, you know, if you go up in a plane and your ears pop, oh, yeah, atmosphere changed, because we're in it all the time. And the same is true with culture. We live in a culture we swim in our culture, it places pressure upon us and enforces things upon us, that we may not even be aware of, in really, really subtle ways. I'm going to digress just a little bit here. And, and talk about, you know, talk about the, you know, talk about the idea of how culture, you know, particularly in the West, permeates without even without even giving it much much consideration, right. So, I talked earlier about the witch trials in Massachusetts that happened, you know, when this in the 1600s. And, you know, certainly they were burning witches in Europe for centuries. You know, there's estimates, like 4 million people killed mostly women. Again, it's patriarchy, right. I mean, there were certainly were men. There were men that were killed during the witch trials in Salem, but it was predominantly women. And there's a lot of stories about why that occurred. And the symbolism of that, and all of that, all of that, I think it's probably incredibly safe to say that most of the people in the Western world who were murdered as witches, were not actually practicing witchcraft. They might have been in some minor ways. But I think most of the time it was, you know, somebody who may have been what we consider mentally ill, it could have been somebody, it could have just been somebody that there was a grudge against, I'm thinking of the Monty Python sketch from the Holy Grail, where they put the nose on the woman and they march her through, and they tell you know, they, oh, she's a witch, and they put her on the scale and measure against the duck edge, just

crazy and silly, you know, in this modern age. So this idea of witches and witches being evil and all of these things, and, and by the way, I mean, you know, even if they were practicing witchcraft, it's not you know, they they turned everything that wasn't mainstream Christian religion into devil worship pretty much back then. It's why we had the Inquisition. It's why we had, you know, it's the it was a way of othering people, making people the other your Doing something that is outside of the culture that we want to enforce, therefore, you are evil and you're in league with the devil, you're the worst kind of thing that we can imagine and you will be put to death for that. And millions estimates of millions of people were killed. It's, you know, again, it's craziness. It's pure insanity. But so that culture permeates, we still have movies coming out in the United States. Where witches are the witches are the bad guys. And I realized that's changed a little bit, right, we have the Wizard of Oz, back in the 30s, which had, which had a good witch, and a bad witch. Right, or a couple of couple of bad witches. And at least one Good Witch we had, you know, I'm thinking of the movie that came out, not that, you know, a few years back, called the witch. And, you know, which reinforced the whole, here's an idea of the, you know, the witches in the woods, eating babies, and that sort of thing. You know, and I grew up, you know, and lived through the, you know, the 80s, the satanic panic. In the United States, where there, you know, everybody was looking for these cults that were murdering babies and all of this stuff. And it was like the witch trials all over again, it was a panic, it was not based in not based in reality, it was not based in anything. So this, this culture, this cultural norm, this archetype, if you would, was, you know, set up, has been running in our culture for 1000s for hundreds of years. And then, you know, even with the sexual revolution, and you know, spiritual spirituality going through a large transition. We're now most people, most people in the United States do not associate with any particular organized religion, for the first time in history. That's not to say, you know, there are lots of people, lots and lots of people describing themselves as spiritual but not religious. That's, you know, that's becoming more common. But the whole point of this is to show that the these cultural themes are despite our progress, despite being ongoing. Continue these cultural themes of witches are the bad guys that eat babies or do whatever. You know, we've got movies like Snow White, and all, you know, again from the 30s. But continuing, you know, the witches, movies, right, Hocus Pocus, you know, and there are a few. There are a few movies and TV shows and stuff where that show which is in and I don't mean to pick on witches, but it's like, just to point out that witches have been picked on. Right, and undeserving Lee have been picked on for centuries. And most of the people who are persecuted as witches probably were not. There's a story about the women who used to brew beer. And they would wear these tall pointy hats. Hey, where did the idea of witches wearing tall pointy hats come from? And then the monasteries figured out that they can make money brewing beer, and so they started burning ale wives, they were called the women who brew beer as witches. Stirring their cauldrons with their big pointy hats.

What do you think that's all about that symbol is all about it was it was um, you know, pure economics back then. You know, burning burning people at the stake so you can take over the business. It's pure economics. And that's again, it's part of the patriarchy, these monasteries. were like, Hey, you know, we need a lot of money to feed ourselves and we're not, you know, what can we do? We could, without leaving the monastery, we could brew beer. Oh, but these women are brewing beer and they already live in the villages and you know, whatever. So that was a common thing in Europe anyway. So I mentioned all of this, and I went off on that tangent, just to point out the fact that our cultural ideas about sex are prevalent. And they go back to things, you know, they, they go back to things that we may not even be in touch with anymore. Right? They may, we may not even understand why some of these prohibitions were in place. We certainly don't. And we may not understand why we have certain thoughts and feelings about sex ourselves, because culture has a way of enforcing these norms until they become unconscious habitual patterns. Um, and there's always these pendulum swings, right? The sexual revolution of the 60s was a pendulum swing from you know, the uptight 40s and 50s you know, where they, they censored Elvis Presley because his hips wiggle too much on TV, when he when he performed. I would hate to imagine people watching some of the music videos from that era, watching some of the music videos from today. be utterly shocked, shocked. You know, so there's there there can be these pendulum swings, right? And, and this is just about sexual norms, and what's what's accepted. in society, and every culture is different, every, you know, where you live might be very, you know, if you're not listening to this from the United States might be very, very different. Culturally. And so, you know, it's important to, to at least understand that we, all of our behavior is informed by the culture that we live in whether or not we buck that culture, or we, you know, uphold the cultural norms. It's hard to book culture because being an outcast or seen as other is difficult makes life difficult, right? It's easier to do that today than it was years ago. Because you can hit you can go online and find a community of people who are like you, right? If I were, you know, growing up in the 1980s, where I spent a lot of my youth and I started telling people, I was practicing shamanism, they probably look at me cross-eyed. Most people wouldn't know what the word meant. You know, that sort of thing. I don't think I knew what the word meant in the 1980s. So, so there you go. Um, but nowadays, there are large, you know, they're a large community. So, again, I want to get back to the topic of this this particular podcast is sex positive spirituality, and how can how can we be more sex positive? And, you know, what I think is, you know, how I think we can move in that direction is that we can look at you know, we can look at sex as start to look at sex as a positive thing and start to apply our spiritual vision to that. Right, and we can take a more positive stance and say, Hey, you know what, you know, you've got to speak in sex, in hushed of sex in hushed tones. Maybe we don't have to do that anymore. Maybe we can speak, speak more openly about it. And from a spiritual perspective, we can look at it as generative as positive as having a man mind body, spirit effect on us as human beings and as part of our path towards spiritual growth, towards enlightenment, towards divine expression. And how can we practice?

How can we use sex as part of our practice and have and use that as having a relationship with the divine that is, you know, the core of all of us, our divine self, are in some circles called the holy guardian angel. Right. As an expression of the Divine, how do how does that inform our sex lives? And can we more identify with the divine when we're having sexual activity? How does that enhance How does how does our spirituality enhance, rather than hinder our sex life and vice versa? How does our sex life enhance our spirituality. And I don't want to be too prescriptive here. Because if I did, then I would be guilty of what I'm kind of complaining about if I'm complaining at all. But I just want to give you some pointers and how you might begin to think about sex positive spirituality. How we can embrace how we can embrace the concept that sex is not bad and evil and horrible, and to be spoken of in hushed tones, that it's as natural a part of the human experience as eating, drinking and sleeping. That it can bring joy, that it can bring ecstasy that it can bring, I don't know enlightenment, that it can bring us closer to our divine nature. I just want to put those thoughts in your head. So you can think about that. And so that maybe you can, you know, maybe sex can become more fulfilling for some people, maybe? Maybe it can deepen your relationship with spirit. I hope you know, I hope so. I hope we can work towards that. You know, I think that is, you know, I think there is no you know, when we start to say things are bad or good or evil or you know, whatever, you know, and we're placing we're placing a lot of judgment on you know, the dement the many dimensions of human beings. I talk about this a lot how, as a human being, you're incredibly complex. No, human is simple. All beings are complex, but humans especially so we, you know, we have a body, mind and spirit, we have freewill. We have many, many dimensions we are, you know, we are divine emanations, we're you know, we have a spark of pure divinity of godhood. within us. We have energy bodies, we have physical bodies, we have mental buttons, astral bodies, we can evolve spiritually, in a single lifetime, we can evolve tremendously spiritually. And I believe we live many lifetimes and we evolve, you know, the point, the point if there is one is to evolve during each of those. So, pushing, you know, and again, along with those many layers, there are many dimensions, there are many, you know, there are many human dimensions, there are many human experiences, and to cut some of those off, because some part of our culture or tells us that they're wrong or bad, or you know, whatever. I just think we're missing a lot. It's like chopping off a limb. Right? It's like, you know, it's like missing a hand or something. You know, we're not, we're not living life in a fully human way. And again, this is no, you know, I realize there are people out there who identify as asexual and that is fine, too. It's fine if it's your choice to do so. You know, but that is a demand, you know, that's a dimension that you're, you know, that you're experiencing, it's the dimension of human experience that you're experiencing, in your experience is fine. I'm just talking about locking away part of human experience because because somebody 400 years ago, or 2000 years ago, or however long ago said, x is bad, don't eat shellfish. Don't you know? Whatever it is,

don't have sex outside of marriage. Don't, you know? Don't masturbate don't do X, Y or Z. Because if you do, you're going to be punished. You know? I just I don't I don't buy into that personally. And I don't want to, you know, again, it's hard talk about this stuff and not come off. Attacking anybody's spirituality, I'm not trying to do that. I realize I may have. And I apologize. But you know, I live, I live in a world where I, you know, I've experienced, again growing up in a culture that comes from Puritanism, which is, which was outdated when it was when it existed 400 years ago. And I believe that has caused, personally, I believe that that repression has caused a lot of problems over the years for people, for individuals, psychologically, you know, from, you know, socially, caused a whole lot of a whole lot of mess. judgment and shame are not positive things. Shame is shame is incredibly destructive, incredibly destructive. Shame, the idea that we are broken, the idea that we are bad, the idea that we are not worthy of love or human compassion, you know, that there's something wrong with us. Because we have normal human compulsions, or any of those things. Shame is, shame is incredibly destructive. Its destructive to society, it's destructive to the individual. You can't have society without healthy individually, you can't have a healthy society without healthy individuals, right? I'm sort of like saying, Well, you know, in generally, I'm healthy, but my heart is failing. Right, then generally, you aren't healthy. You know, unless you take care of you take care of the problem with your heart, you know, your, your other organs are going to suffer for sure. So you can't have a really healthy society without healthy individuals, I think. And I think shame causes a lot of mental health problems. You know, and I, you know, I can tell you, I can speak from personal experience having lived through a lot of childhood abuse, there was a certain amount of shame in that for me, and I did suffer for many years for that and never talked about it. And I talk about it fairly openly now. Because it's part of my path and overcoming that shame, that none of that stuff was my fault. You know, I certainly felt like it was a part of me somehow, I don't know. You know, it's weird, we, you know, we go through this stuff. So, in places where our spirituality enforces a level of shame, I do think it's unhealthy. And I think it's something to look at. And I think it's something to ask yourself, whether you accept that part of your spirituality or not the part that causes you shame, or does not allow you to live who you are. My whole I have a, you know, this, this idea that, you know, for people who know me on a personal level, that I just want people to feel like they can be who they are around me. And I remember I had a dear friend many years ago, who and I had suspected for many years that he was gay, for example, um, but he had not come out of the closet. And so it wasn't for me to ask or to force the issue or whatever. I just accepted him as a dear friend. And you know, one day, you know, one day he came out to me and I was so it was. It was, I think, a more emotional moment for me than it was for him.

Which is, which is interesting, because it was such an honor. It was such an honor for me that to understand that I had been enough of a friend to him that he felt safe coming out to me and I can't you know, I'm I you know, I'm a straight male and I don't I cannot understand. I cannot fully understand or comprehend. And what it must be like to live in the closet for most of your life, and then, you know, come out to people that you care about and come out to your friends and not understanding how they're going to react. I, like I don't have an understanding of that from a firsthand perspective. But I can think about how gosh, oh, my, you know, I can, I can understand it for as an outsider and say, Wow, that you know, what a step. And so it's a very emotional thing for me. Because I really want the people around me to just be who they are, and to be honest, and to be able to be vulnerable with me. And for me, not to judge them. And for them to feel safe, I want to be a safe person for people. And so, um, you know, that's something I wouldn't you know, if you're listening to this, it's something I would I would encourage for for you as well, I hope that if you're listening to this podcast, that you are someone who's in touch with your spiritual side, to a level that you that you understand what being a safe person how important it is, to be a safe person in the world. I would encourage you to at least think about that. You know, the people in my life, how can I be a safe person for them? How can you know, not just about sexuality, but about anything? How can you be that person who doesn't judge? You sets aside any of your cultural conditioning and just looks at this person with you who as a human being, who, you know, can be vulnerable, but is also an aspect of the Divine as as much as anybody else? And how can you be with them? How can you be witness to them, and without judging, holding them without judgment. So with that, hopefully, I'm not getting too preachy on you. Not my intention. But it's something that I feel very strongly about. I want, I would like you to think about that. And I would like you to think about how we can make spirituality, more sex positive, how sex can be less embarrassing and shameful and part of our human experience and part of our spirituality.

And with that, I will leave you I would encourage you to if you have any comments or questions or topics or anything that you'd like me to discuss in the future. please get in touch with me through my website, and the announcer will tell you where that is.

Announcer 1:03:36

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

Ep18 Toxic Positvity and Spiritual Bypassing

Announcer 0:30

Hello, and welcome to speaking spirit where we talk about all things spiritual. Your host, john Moore is a shamanic practitioner and spiritual teacher. And now here's john.

John Moore 0:49

Hello, everybody, wherever you happen to be in the world.

As I record this episode of the podcast, it is a Sunday morning where I am. So I wish you good morning, even though it could be any time of day that you're listening to this, and it's one of the cool things I love about technology and the internet and all of those wonderful things is that I can speak to people all over the world, I think the last count, when I looked at my podcast statistics were 30 different countries, people were listening to this from so welcome wherever you're from. And whatever time of day, you're listening to this. And I'm, it makes me super happy to hear from people who've listened to this and, and just know that people are listening, and hopefully I, you know, do my best to offer useful tidbits and, you know, things I've picked up along the way and things I've learned in my training and discoveries I've made and that sort of thing. And I hope it's extremely useful for you, beyond just sort of pontificating, or, you know, this is, pardon me, this is how things go. By the way, I don't edit these. So if I cough a little bit or something, you get it wrong. I feel like that's a little more authentic, when I come to you without editing of any kind. So anyway, I hope this is useful. My whole intention of this podcast is to provide useful information, not just, Oh, that's interesting, or, you know, something that you can put to use or some understanding that you can get that helps you on your spiritual path, or gives you information about a spiritual path, you may want to explore or, you know, that sort of thing. And with that in mind, I'm going to talk about a subject that is that comes up for me a lot, particularly when I'm teaching or when I've led groups in the past and that sort of thing. So there's these two related concepts, one, you know, I'll give them different names, but they're kind of two peas in a pod are two sides to the same coin, if you were the one concept is this idea of toxic positivity. And that may sound a little strange to you. And you may never have heard that phrase before. And the other one is spiritual bypassing. And in and again, you may or may not have heard those, either one of those terms. And so I'm gonna, as always, if I introduce something that may be new or different concept, I'm going to define those terms, I'm going to define them from my understanding also, not because my definitions are correct, simply so you understand where I'm coming from. And you may have heard different definitions of these terms. And I'm not here to say that they're incorrect. I'm just here to say, this is how I'm using them so you can understand them when I talk about them. So, you know, we probably all have the understanding of toxic or really negative people in our life, right? We have people who, you know, we've all encountered people who seem to live to complain about things. And, you know, they people that can, can really bring you down can bring the energy of a room down. And, you know, it's understandable why some people might try to flip to the other side and look at everything in a positive light. And there's there is a there's this spiritual truth to that there's a spiritual truth to the idea that people are on their own path. And people are experiencing things for reasons unseen, and we're all evolving and all of those things. Where this kind of becomes a problem is or not even kind of where this is, there's a few places where positivity can become a problem. Right? So,

the first, the first kind of most obvious one is the denial of reality. Right? There's sort of this famous, I don't know where it comes from, but there's this on the internet, there's this famous meme image of, it's a dog who's sitting, I guess, in a house or something, and everything around him is on fire. And he's saying, everything is fine. Right, everything is fine, I'm just going to ignore the circumstances around me, I'm not going to take care of business, that sort of thing. That's when and that leads to all kinds of problems that leads to poor boundaries, right? with friends, oh, they're okay. You know, oh, this, you know, this person's Okay, that that sort of thing, it leads to us not setting up proper boundaries with people, sometimes it leads us to not taking steps necessary to solve our problems. That sort of thing. So in that way, positivity, sort of unwarranted positivity, which takes the form of ignoring reality, or ignoring the steps need needed to be taken in certain circumstances. There in it becomes toxic. I think going into things with having the attitude of I'm going to do all I can do and things will turn out, okay. It's totally fine. Right, things will turn out as they are supposed to, I'm still going to do what I need to do. And I, I tend to approach things from you know, obviously, I'm a shamanic practitioner, my training is in shamanism. And so I tend to approach things from that perspective. And in shamanism, we are, you know, practitioners are expected to walk in multiple worlds, that is we deal with physical reality. And we deal with spiritual reality at the same time. And, you know, traditional shamanic cultures, you were, you know, if you held the role of Shawn and a culture, you were not just a healer, but you would probably be expected to, you know, help your, your help your tribe in other ways, such as help them know when to plant things or help them know when to move a herd or when to hunt, or, you know, that sort of thing. You're taking care of the every day, things that help kept your community healthy, safe and sane, as well as attending to the spiritual needs of the community. I know in and I am not an expert, but I you know, I've read a little about the, you know, the Kahuna in Hawaii, and the Kahunas. You know, we might call them shaman or medicine men or what have you. But my understanding is they had specialties and there were Kahunas who were good at navigation and good or good at fishing or good at planting crops or, you know, could navigate by the stars and all of these things. So there was a level of really practical, real world survival and thriving knowledge that they had to have besides this sort of hidden spiritual teachings that went on, as well. And that, you know, that's true in other cultures as well that the shamanic people in other cultures may have had specialties, some may have been healers, some may have been diviners, some may have had other other types of specialties. And I find that true even with modern shamanism with core shamanism you know, I know people who are say, you know, work with animals, animal whispers, I know people who are specialized around soul retrieval or deep possession or you know, bunches of practices and people that are specialized around them, whether shamanism is a specialty for some people, that sort of thing. But again, the idea is is attending to the entirety of reality, which includes physical reality as well. So, the other side of toxic positivity, and I'm going to, I'm going to spend some time at near the end of this podcast talking about

holding space and what that means holding space for others, who may be experiencing something painful, and how to be how to be a healing presence for those people who are going through something challenging difficulty. So, again, so toxic positivity where you know, again, so we it can be become toxic with ourselves when we are ignoring circumstances that are going on. And it can become toxic towards others, when we seek to have them bypass their pain, right. So this is the one that you know, people are, people have great intentions sometimes, and when a loved one passes away, and this happens frequently, in my experience in the United States, and I don't know if other cultures have similar, similar things. But this is something that happens here that I've seen a lot. So somebody passes away, and people try to comfort their loved ones by saying pleasantries like, oh, they're in a better place now, or Oh, they're out of pain or, you know, look on the bright, you know, look on the bright side of your loved one passing away. And these people are absolutely well intentioned, loving human beings who just want to alleviate the pain and grief that another person is going through. The issue with this is grief is a natural process that we all need to go through. And you can't really bypass it, you can push it off, you can shove it down into the shadow part of you, I've talked a lot in the past, I've done an entire podcast on Shadow Work. And this is an area of mine that I focus a lot on. Because everybody, everybody has a shadow and everybody should be doing Shadow Work, in my opinion. So, you know, when you know when somebody is going through something rough, whether that's the loss of a loved one, or a breakup or something else, loss of a job loss of a home, and you show up and try to paint something, you know, painting in a better light or something like that. That's not particularly helpful. Actually, you know, a person may or may not feel a little bit better for a very short period of time. But you're bypassing the natural grieving process. This is, I'm going to talk about a solution for that, I'm going to talk about what it means to hold space for somebody towards the end of this podcast, after I get through the toxic parts. Again, you know, I try to be useful. So if I'm just talking about things that are bad, these are, you know, not bad, that's a value judgment, these are sort of stumbling blocks, stumbling blocks to becoming a more integrated person and helping others to become more integrated and or staying out of the way of other's own integration work. So, you know, again, this is toxic, and I have you know, personally when I've been through something rough, and somebody comes to me and says, Oh, it's gonna be okay, you're gonna be great, you're gonna get back in the, you know, data that you're ignoring my pain. And I often feel, have felt, I guess, resentful of that. I felt resentful of somebody trying to bypass my pain and saying, you know, basically, it feels like somebody saying your pain is legitimate. Because you're just not looking at things from the proper perspective. And that is a real, that's a real judgment. It's in a in a subtle way, and as well intentioned, does that maybe in a subtle way, it's very shaming. It's saying there's something wrong with you for feeling Pain is something wrong with you for taking the death of a loved one so harshly, you should be looking at things from a different perspective, and then your pain will magically go away. It's not how it works. It's not how it has ever worked, it's not how it will ever work.

So again, you know, I'm gonna talk about towards the end, I'm going to talk about the solution, a solution for that, how you can show up for people because, you know, most people care about other human beings. And, again, these can be very well intentioned things that we're doing when we show up for somebody and say, oh, look on the bright side, you can have the best of intentions, I'm just here to alleviate this person's pain, I want them to feel better. But there's another part of this as well. Another part of it is that I'm there can be discomfort and awkwardness, with experiencing somebody going through something hard, going through some painful emotions, some painful challenges. And so, you know, maybe on an unconscious level, we want to avoid that we want to avoid experiencing that. Because we're empathetic, and we feel what other people are feeling. And it's painful to see somebody we care about going through something hard, went through something painful. We want to make it better, we want to fix things, I fall into that category. I'm a fixer, I love to fix things, it was a hard, it's a hard lesson for me, I want to jump in, make everybody feel better. It's been a real work, you know, it's a work in progress for me to not rescue people from their feelings. And this comes up in teaching quite frequently when I'm teaching. Teaching shamanism in particular. You know, we sit in, we sit in a circle, which is a sacred shape. And so we can see everybody interact with everybody. And there's a sort of energetic connection that that happens in a circle, that's a little hard to describe. There's a closeness, even if the people you're in the room with are strangers, you're in their energy field, you're observing them, that sort of thing. And sometimes people have some really hard emotions come up, some times people break down and cry, and circle or that sort of thing. And there's this urge, because people, there tend to be good people who want to be helping others, and they're spiritually conscious, and all of these things, there's this urge to rescue them from their feelings. And at the beginning of any training circle, we always tell people, when somebody has these tough feelings come up, or somebody gets emotional, or they start crying or whatever, it is not your job to rescue them. There's a there's a number of reasons for that. One is people are fully capable of rescuing themselves. And we go from that assumption that everybody has sovereignty, including emotional sovereignty over themselves. You know, another reason is, is exactly what I'm talking about. We're not wanting people to bypass these feelings that are coming up there. So they're coming up for a reason. You know, whether it's some old trauma or just something else, you know, this stuff that's been stored in our body, mind and spirit for so long, wants to come up and be expressed. And we should let that we should honor it, we should allow it. We should allow people to melt down. Obviously, we don't allow people to harm themselves. We make sure people aren't in an OK condition to drive when they leave, or you know, are grounded and integrated before they before they head home. And that's a safety issue more than anything else. We just don't we don't want people having an emotional breakdown and hopping in their car and getting into an accident or harming themselves in some other way or you know, that that sort of thing. But that's not bypassing it's not you know, that's just a safety issue. But you know, so I've seen this over and over again, somebody has some emotions and people Like, you know, want to jump in and talk about it, want to jump in and rescue, save that person from themselves saving them from their tough emotions? No, you're supposed to feel those. They're supposed to come up.

And they are unpleasant. But when you're when they you allow them to move through you, they have less of a hold on your life. And I would encourage you to, I'll probably do more episodes on shadow stuff going forward. So we're talking about, you know, at this, this point, we're talking about toxic positivity, and how how it kind of shows up in ways that stifle the natural movement of emotion. Or we use as a way to blind us to the reality that we're in. Right, we're sitting in the room that's on fire going, everything is okay, I feel great. I'm no recognize that you're afraid. And I remember, you know, a few years ago, obviously, before the pandemic, I was hosting meetups in the area, for a group called spiritually conscious professionals. And we, you know, there were basically open to anyone who had any sort of spiritual consciousness or spiritually curious or, you know, that sort of thing. And we had people from all walks of life and all different types of spirituality show up, we had people who were minister, Christian ministers, who were counseling ministers, we had people who were acupuncturist and practice, you know, Taoism. And we had people who were your Reiki practitioners or shamanic practitioners or what have you. And it was really nice, meetup and I hope to get back to it post pandemic, in person. And it was great, there were lots of shares, lots of viewpoints. And I'll never forget, there were two young women who showed up to one of the meetings and they were new to a spiritual path. And they were both in recovery from drug addiction. So fairly new to recovery. They were, I believe, getting outpatient treatment for substance addiction. I don't, you know, I don't know which substances but um, you know, that's a pretty big deal. And they have been working, in part they've been working spiritually to help them with some of the challenges of overcoming addiction. And Gosh, what a hard path. That is, I, you know, as an outside observer, you know, and having lots of people that I'm related to, and lots of people I know, struggle with addiction, what a hard path that is. And we should recognize that, you know, we should recognize what challenging what a challenging thing addiction is. It is not something I wish on anybody. It's a horrible thing to kick. Anyway, these two young women, great intentions, they came, you know, they came to talk about spirituality and all of these things. And, you know, one of the young women was talking about how she thought, you know, she thought that she was at the point in her spiritual development where she shouldn't get angry at people anymore. Wouldn't that be a lovely thing? Right? And, you know, on her way over to the meeting, somebody she was in traffic, and somebody had cut her off or something, and she got angry with that person. And then she noticed she was angry with that person and became angry about being angry, I shouldn't be angry. And you know, and my question for was well then were you angry that you got angry that you were angry? And how far does that go? You know, if you had just had allowed yourself a human moment and said, I feel angry right now. It would have passed probably in a few minutes. But she hung on to it and then she got angry at herself. And this isn't necessarily toxic positivity because she wasn't bypassing but there was this idea that is present in toxic positivity and and spiritual bypassing that I'm I'm evolved to the point Where I shouldn't feel these feelings anymore.

Or it's wrong to have certain types of feelings or it's, you know, it's the shoulds. When we get into the shoulds, and the showdance, we tend to be shaming ourselves. She was basically shaming herself for having a human moment. And it's not to say you can't reflect on your feelings. It's not to say, Gosh, I got really mad at that guy a few minutes ago for cutting me off in traffic. And you know, that seems like a silly small minor thing to get mad about. But where's that coming from? For me, that's when this can turn into a positive thing. When we start to look at the stuff that might be in our shadow, why am I getting triggered by this? Why am I getting angry about this? And that's not to judge it. It's not to say this is bad or wrong, or, again, should or shouldn't. It's not about judgment. It's about discernment. It's about what's going on for me, what is what is in me that needs to be healed? Or where is this coming from? Where is this anger coming from being triggered is a really good indicator, usually that there's a wound in the unconscious, or there's a wound that is unconscious, I should say, it's a better way to phrase that. There's an unconscious wound. And, um, you know, from talking about shadow stuff, and Shadow Work, we know that healing and integration is really about casting a light on the stuff that's in our shadow. It's not about pretending that it's not there. It's not about pretending that we don't get angry. It's not about convincing ourselves that we're bad because we feel angry, or we're not enlightened or evolved or ascended, or what have you, because we feel anger. None of those things. It's about recognizing that we're human, and we have those moments. And, um, you know, you may get to the point in your spiritual development where things bother you a lot less, you become more imperturbable. And that is a noble goal. But that is not something that you can fake it till you make it. Because by faking it, again, you're cramming these emotions down into your shadow. And the stuff that's in your shadow, if you don't recognize it, integrate at work with it, it will run your life in ways that you don't even expect that you don't even know. A good example, if you've ever watched the show Seinfeld. You know, there's an episode where the character George's father has this little phrase that he repeats. serenity now, he's just serenity now, serenity now, but he's getting angrier and angrier and he's, instead of calming himself, it's, he's screaming it. Right? And, you know, it's, it's a joke, you know, it's meant to be funny, because here's this guy screaming serenity now is he's getting completely outraged. Um, but it's, you know, if you honor if you honor your feelings, and you look at them, and you look at them from not, you look at them from a non judgmental perspective. You know, it's, you know, it's hard to it's a little bit hard to say this, but if you treat yourself a little bit like you would treat a toddler. Okay, a toddler who's having a temper tantrum, screaming and shaming at that toddler is not going to stop that toddler from having a temper tantrum. That will not work that will make things I'm a dad, I know that will make that would make things much much worse.

Instead, you you know, one tact is to recognize the toddler's feelings and say, Oh my gosh, you're so angry. You know, tell me about what's making you so angry. You know and sit with them and respect that they're feeling angry. You can't talk a toddler out of feeling angry. So there are parts of us there. There are parts of us inside that are childish as well. parts that may never have grown up and that's fine. We've all heard of the inner child and all of that sort of thing and a lot of our emotion comes from there. Some of it comes from childhood wounding or Other traumatic experiences, and you can't yell at or shame yourself or, you know, convince yourself that that stuff doesn't exist. But you can honor it, and you can work with it. And it will have less of less of a grasp on your life, I'm not saying you'll feel emotions less, I'm saying you'll have fewer unconscious responses, you'll be less reactive, maybe you'll feel better, you might have less depression, you might feel healthier from not suppressing constantly. Um, I know I do. I know, you know, for years and years, I repressed a whole lot of stuff. Decades actually. And, you know, my own story is, you know, I come from a background of trauma, serious childhood trauma. I come from a family where there was Domestic Abuse and Child Abuse and substance abuse, and you know, the word abuse happens a lot. And I bypass that for decades, because it was so painful, it was so painful to look at, it was painful to express my feelings. And that came to a head with a real health crisis, actually. And that's what got me to sort of come into shamanism as a way to heal myself, I, you know, I will fully admit that I came to shamanism from a 100% selfish perspective, that I just wanted, some self healing. But those floodgates opened and I was not in control. And it was, you know, it was, it was a extremely uncontrolled mess. My life became a mess. And as a dad, I was, you know, not always the best dad, I could be. I never, you know, I never used my children or anything like that, but I just couldn't be present for them. Because I couldn't be present with myself, I can, you know, I was lost. I went through a crisis. And, you know, in allowing myself to move through that, and working with my shadow material, and all of those things, I really did take better control of my life, I really did get a grip on things, and I really did become the Father, I wanted to be and have the relationship with my daughters, I'm so close with my daughters, very, very close with my daughters. And, you know, I treasured nothing more than my relationship with them. Have a fantastic relationship with my daughters. And, you know, there's a lot of research that says that when parents do their own work and heal, that has an extremely positive effect on kids mental health. So, so I'm happy to say, and I will never say that I'm perfect, I will never say that I'm done. I will never say any of those things, continually work on myself, continually do my self work. But in the process, I found out that I was pretty good at helping other people as well. And then I loved teaching. And I loved teaching especially people to help themselves. Because ultimately, we are all

you know, internally, we are all sparks from the same divine light. And you are, you are as divine as anybody. You have the same piece of divinity within you that everyone else has, you are connected to everything. And you have talked about divinity a lot and I will probably talk about it more in future podcasts. But I believe that and I've seen that and I have seen people shine their light and it is a beautiful, beautiful thing. So anyway, toxic positivity. You have talked a lot about that. And I want to talk a little bit about spiritual bypassing, which is a another another kind of aspect of the same phenomena, I guess. So when we talk about spiritual bypassing, we're talking about people who are again, there you spirituality to bypass and I realize I'm using the term to define the term but I will, I'll get better with this, I promise I'll narrow it down a little bit more. They're using spirituality, to ignore their feelings, to bypass boundaries to you know, again, it's just like with toxic positivity, they're sitting in the burning room going, everything is fine. This is what was meant to be. I am, I am ascended. You know, and again with the story with a with a young woman who came to my meetup and she was, she was angry at herself for getting angry. what she was doing was she was attempting, unsuccessfully to spiritually bypass her anger, to say, I am at a level of spirit now where I don't have human emotions. Um, you know, I haven't met too many people that have completely bypass spiritual, you know, use spiritual means to completely bypassed human emotion. And by I haven't met too many people, I think the exact number of people I've met is zero. And I have met all kinds of people. I have spent time with Tibetan Buddhist monks and new lots of new age people and that hundreds of shamanic practitioners and energy workers and all kinds of all kinds of people. And yeah, I mean, there, there's a fair, fair amount of people who are have declared themselves enlightened or ascended or what have you. You know, and I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna speak to that too much, I think. I think they're, you know, I think there are people who have an abiding consciousness of their non dual nature, I think there are people who've gotten there. It's pretty rare. I mean, by inviting I mean, all the time, I think lots and lots of people have these glimpses of their connection to everything. I certainly get them. But it's, it's a hard place to abide in because we all have egos. And we all have identified with, to some degree with a body and with a name and with labels, you know, I'm a dad, I'm a shamanic practitioner, I'm, I'm an American, I'm this I'm that. And, you know, part of the work that I do spiritually is to spend some time dis identifying with those labels, roles and ideas. However, I still get to come back into waking reality and, you know, show the tribe where to plant the corn, show the tribe, where to hunt, the elk, you know, those kinds of things. Of course, I'm being metaphoric here. Although I do live next to a farm where they grow corn, I do not tell them where to grow it, and I don't hunt elk. But being metaphoric, I still have to walk in both worlds, I still have to, you know, take my kids to school

and, and those kinds of things, and deal with a pandemic. You know, I just got my first vaccine shot, and I'm looking forward to getting my second one so that I can start to have gatherings again with other people who have been vaccinated. You know, as spiritual as I am and into spiritual healing as I am, I still trust the science I still trust medicine, I still go to the doctor. All of those things they don't spiritually bypass that. So I think you know, what happens and in you know, this is something I've spoken about before, as well is that when you are doing spiritual development, I'm speaking in a very broad term here. you're developing your astral body and again, I'm you know, I'm speaking in a very broad term as well here because you could be doing all kinds of things you could be developing your physical body using yoga asanas. You could be developing your a theory of body by you know, meditating on chakras and doing cleansing and you know, that sort of thing. But when you do when you do Do these things and when you gain knowledge, and when you practice and you meditate and you pray and you make offerings, and, you know, any of these things that you do that are spiritual, that offer spiritual development, you are developing your, your astral body, right, you're what we might call your soul body, you're developing that in its, you know, not developing, like you're building muscles on it because it is a formless thing.

One of the things that happens when you develop your astral body is it's very, you know, to use a big term, it's hubris, cystic, it develops your, your ego interface with that gets stronger. And you, you know, again, it's, it's, you know, in the West, we might use the term, he's got a big ego. So you develop this, this, this ego, and part of that is, and by ego, I just mean, it's, it's the part of you that you identify as, it's the part of you that when you say I, and you're conscious of as a separate thing, it's just your consciousness of who you are as an individual. Right, instead of who you are, as part of the whole, it's who you are, your consciousness of who you are, as an individual, and as a separate being. And we don't under it all, there's no separation, but you know, we still have this ego, we still experience we experienced, like, we are the universe where piece of piece of creation experiencing itself, right, broken into little pieces, so we can experience life and go through and have all these lessons and things. So, you know, so the ego gets bigger, right? It gets inflated, you know, and the it again, it's not necessarily a judgment, but it can really hinder people and it can become dangerous. And we've seen this over and over again, with spiritual leaders who develop a following. And they wind up, you know, in abusive relationships somehow could be sexual abuse can be financial abuse, could be physical abuse, could be abuse of sovereignty and boundaries, right, taking away people's freedom to choose for themselves. And this happens over and over again, all the time with people who have a high level of spiritual development, but have not done their Shadow Work, have not done their cleanup. And the problem is that they have because they have developed high, you know, they've developed the astral body. They haven't cleaned up the shadow, you know, they're often seen when they gather a following is they're often seen as beyond reproach. Right? This person is enlightened, they're ascended their master, they channel the, you know, the old gods or, you know, what have you. they're seen as infallible, they're seen as perfect, they're seen as, beyond reproach, nothing they do is wrong. And unfortunately, that's how a lot of these people get away with abuses for a really, really long period of time. Sometimes, you know, we look at the, you know, one of the most famous cases was the Jim Jones case, and where he, you know, had I think it was close to 1000 people in just cyanide, you know, in this cult, and they all you know, they died many of them children, you know, we have you know, we have lots of Yogi's who start ashrams who wind up sexually abusing their, you know, people and, you know, there's this whole sort of Guru relationship and that not to take anything away from people who enter into guru relationships. I'm sure there are lots of them that are fine and healthy. But there are a lot of them that aren't and we start to lose our discernment when we hand over. we hand over our sovereignty to somebody else because we perceive them as being above Spiritually, more developed, ascended, you know, all of those things. I'm not a huge fan of the whole Ascension thing. It may be I just don't understand it enough. But it seems very patriarchal to me. I am ascended literally, above you, literally above others. You know, it's not to say people doing the work that they're calling Ascension aren't doing fine spiritual development work, I

just, I don't know. It's just a term that I've seen thrown around a lot by people who are sometimes sleazy for lack of a better term. And not everybody, certainly not everybody using the that term or not even most people. But it's a hide. So if you're using spirituality as a hide, if you're using it as a method of denial, if you're using it to not feel your feelings, or you're using it to not address your shadow, you're doing what we call spiritual bypassing. The danger of that is you're not doing your cleanup work, you're not doing the Shadow Work that you need to be doing. In fact, you're probably increasing your shadow. You're probably cramming more trauma, feeling hurt down into your shadow saying it's unacceptable for me to have human experiences. I should not I'm too spiritual for that. I don't get angry, I've ascended. This is not to say you can't let go of feelings, they come up. And you can let them go as they come up. But you can only do that if you're addressing them. You can't do that if you're denying them. You can't You can't release feelings. You can't release emotional energy, if you could deny that it exists. Right? It's like, you know, it's like in spy movies when they're holding, you know, when they're holding somebody in secret in a secret location. And nobody's gonna seek them out to rescue them because they don't know that they exist. Right? Or they don't know. They don't know that they're in danger. Right. I'm a big fan of the old James Bond films I, you know, I loved Sean Connery and Roger Moore, and you know, all those guys, you know, and they tended to have to rescue themselves because they were, you know, they were on this top secret mission. And that's what your feelings are. If you push them down, your feelings are not meant to be secret agents. So, let's talk, you know, because, again, I want these podcast episodes to be useful to you. Let's talk about some solutions for this. So the first solution is when you're dealing with your own stuff, you know, first of all, do Shadow Work, seek out somebody to teach you to do Shadow Work, read about Shadow Work, find a you know, work with a depth psychologist or work with a shamanic practitioner who is versed in shadow work. And do this work. If you're doing spiritual work at all, and you're not addressing your shadow, you're missing at least half but probably more of the work to be done. But I think everybody could benefit from Shadow Work, whether you're doing spiritual work or not. And there's all kinds of ways to do that. So that's, that's the first one. The second one is to become observant to become really observant of your feelings as they arise. And it's okay to you know, it's okay to label them. It's okay to examine them. But don't, you know, don't push them away. And I know it can be hard if you're in a situation, you're sitting at work and you're overcome with an emotion and you're like, I gotta just get through the day. I get that. I do get that. And sometimes you just need time, you know, some time to I get I have to, you know, I've got to focus on something right now. And I'll deal with this later. The problem is when later never comes. So one of the you know, One of the healing practices that I have myself used and and have gotten great benefit from is to learn to become comfortable with the discomfort and sit with painful emotions. And when I say sit with painful emotions, I literally mean that I mean sit and just experience the emotion and allow it allow the emotion, what will happen is that

your emotions will peak, there'll be they'll come in waves, there'll be peaks and valleys and that sort of thing. And eventually, the energy will move through you. And the important thing is not to attach to it, don't become mired in it, don't feel it. And don't push it away. So you sit in a space of allowing, and allow yourself to feel what you're feeling. And if you decide this is useful, you can you can explore it from a sensory perspective, meaning, where do I feel this in my body? Does it have a size doesn't have a shape? When I associate a color with it? Does it have a texture? Does it have a temperature? Does it have a sound? Does it have a smell? Is there a taste in my mouth, you can explore it from that perspective, from the perspective of curiosity. Over time, over time, you know, this allows a lot of stuff to come up and out, that wants to move through you, it doesn't want to be locked in some motion this these feelings, these hard things they don't want to be locked in, they want to come up and out. So that is that is one aspects of the Shadow Work. Sitting you know, becoming comfortable with a discomfort and sitting with painful feelings. Without having to take action on them. Just feel them. Just feel them there's nothing to do. Just be with them. Okay, and the third piece is learning to hold space for with others. So this is you know, and I talked earlier on about what happens when I've been in circle teaching and hard emotions come up for some some buddy. And there are other people in the group whose instinct is to rescue that person to save them from what they're feeling, to make them feel better to comfort them. And we've got you know, we've we tried to put a really safe container around the space so people can have these feelings come up and out and it's fine. And we might offer somebody tissues if they're crying. But what we really do is something called holding space. And you can do this with an individually you can do this in a circle, you can do this as a collective. Holding space is really about being completely attentive. This is hard, it is a hard thing to learn to do. It's hard for me, it's still hard for me sometimes you sit with empathy, and total attentiveness to this other person and you become a sacred witness to their feelings. And trust me when I say there is something immensely healing about that. So you sit with out judgment. This is good, this is bad. This is you know, should shouldn't all of those things. You sit without judgment or stand or whatever, you know, it doesn't have to be sitting. I'm just thinking in my brain I'm picturing, you know, sitting in circle with people are going through tough emotions. We don't run to the rescue. We don't offer them personal stories about ourselves. This is a big one. Oh, you know, I had the same thing happened to me and blah, blah, blah. No, no, it's not about you. It is about them, is about you being a sacred witness to their pain. And by doing that, about creating that container for them for this pain, the pain will resolve. It will on its own. But not only that you're empowering this person by recognizing their sovereignty by recognizing their personal boundaries. Your job is to sit there and feel all of the awkwardness that there is. Um, the, the challenge sometimes is, What to say? If anything? right what to say to this person so that I'm not

trampling on their sovereignty? So, oftentimes the answer to that is nothing, say nothing, just sit and allow them to experience whatever is coming up. You can be encouraging sometimes I've had clients who've gone through some emotion and apologized for having some emotion, you know, I'm sorry that I'm crying or, you know, whatever. You know, and I don't want them to feel shameful or sorry that they're having some motions. So sometimes I will offer a word of encouragement and say, it's okay. Allow it all to come up. Or it's okay, let's just sit with it. What is what frequently happens with fixers and and again, I'm a fixer, I have this instinct is that will often jump into advice for somebody who's going through something. And that's not what that's not necessarily helpful. Because I'm having a moment, I'm having an emotional moment. I don't, I'm not thinking from my rational mind, when you're in, you know, just from a biological perspective, you might be operating from older parts of your brain, your limbic system, not operating from your neocortex, you're not in problem solving mode at that point. You're just in, I'm dealing with, you know, these overwhelming emotions that come up mode, and somebody jumping in. So you know, what you should do is X, Y, or Z. That is, it's not the time for that. It's not helpful. And if you if there's a question about it, if somebody comes to you, and this is something, this is something I love, I didn't invent any of these things, I'm just relaying them to you. These are things that I've learned, I've learned them from others. I've learned them from people who were practitioners, I've learned them from people who are in helping professions. So if there's a question, if somebody comes to you with a problem, and they're talking about a problem, and they're emotional, and they're, you know, whatever, your job is mainly to empathize with them. But if there's a question about offering them advice, um, just ask, just ask, would you like some advice about this? Or do you just want to sit and talk about this? You know, put it into your own words, but you know, I have, you know, I've had, you know, I've had people sort of Trump on, you know, I've had an issue, I've had people sort of step all over me and start to offer me advice, and it's usually unhelpful, or something I've already tried or that sort of thing. And then I feel like I don't want to share anymore. And so then I've got to like, stifle those feelings. So none of that puts the onus on me to deal with this other person who's trying to try to help me and they probably have great intentions, but what they're doing is not necessarily that helpful. So learn to sit and hold space. And if there is a question about whether advice or help is needed, ask, sit with empathy. It's okay to empathize with people. So, you know, just one small example from my life. You know, my, my daughter, both of my daughters are very smart. They do really well in school. And I have one daughter who tends to be really hard on herself when it comes to grades and, you know, she got a grade she didn't like on a test at one point and she came to me in tears and It was just, you know, she was a bit of a mess. She's very emotional about this. And, you know, she just starts talking, well, you know, these questions on the test, we didn't study this material, and the teacher never covered it in class, and this and that. And so instead of jumping in and trying to say, you know,

immediately trying to say, Oh, it's gonna be okay, or, you know, whatever, I did enter into her world a little bit ago, man, that really sucks. I hate it. When teachers do that. I hate it. When teachers put stuff on tests, how can they put something on a test that you never studied in class? You know, she just wanted a little empathy, she wanted some respect for what she was feeling. You know, and when she was able to calm down a little bit after that, after she saw that I was respecting her feelings, and we allow the emotion to pass through, then I could talk to her and say, Hey, you know, have you thought about the fact that this is just one test? You know, what are some things we can? What are some? What are some things that you could do? Can you contact a team, you know, and I always try to place it into the hands of the other person if I can. Because I want to respect their sovereignty and their ability to solve their own problems. I think most people have their own solutions. But we, we box people in pretty tightly. You know, we, we box behaviors in pretty tightly and people are always looking for social approval for things, and I, you know, as best you can give, give people your approval. Really, love is about acceptance and approval, and that sort of thing. You know, in holding space is really about that it's really about I approve, I, you know, I wish you weren't going through this pain, but I approve of your expression of it, I approve of you feeling your feelings. I approve of your reaction to this painful situation. I accept it openly from one piece of divinity to another. Okay, so you can empathize. Say, man, that really sucks. I had a client one time whose significant other was cheating, she discovered that her significant other was cheating. And was obviously extremely upset. And you know, I was like, wow, that really sucks. You know, that. Screw that person. I can't believe that, you know, just empathizing, not telling them that they didn't have a right to feel how they were feeling. But they have every right to feel how they're feeling. Not to feel it, but to empathize, to enter into their world a little bit. Without getting sucked in. It's important to maintain good boundaries, but to be 100% present for that person, to be receptive to be in that divine feminine state of complete receptivity, acceptance, love to look at that person and say, I love you Even though you're going through an experience that makes me uncomfortable. I love and accept you fully even though you are bringing up painful feelings in myself. I love and accept you even though this is really awkward for me. But because I love and accept you, I want you to have this experience so you can heal from it. So I see by the old the clock on the wall that I'm about out of time for this podcast. I hope this has been interesting for you. This is a topic I'm sure I will touch on more in the future. I circle around to shadow work quite a bit. Because it is. It is so important. And I think it's something that people avoid for a reason. There's a reason why this stuff is in the shadow. It's painful to examine. It's unconscious for a reason. But real healing comes from when we acknowledge it and recognize it and are okay and we offer ourselves the self love to go through these experiences. So I hope you have a great rest of your day wherever you are in the world wherever you are listening to this. I love you all. And I will be talking to you next time.

Announcer 1:05:43

You have been listening to speaking spirit with your host, John Moore. For more info or to contact john, go to MaineShaman.com that's ma i n e s h a m a n.com