EP59 The Ecstasy of Divine Love: A Spiritual Journey of Self-Discovery

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 0:48

Hello. Hello, everyone. Hello, my friends. Thank you for joining me again. I am going to talk today to you about one of Gosh, one of my very favorite topics in the whole world. I've done episodes about this topic before. But you know, I always approach it from a different perspective and bring in different you know, aspects and talk about different ways of experiencing what I'm talking about. So today I'm going to talk about love. Specifically, I'm going to talk about divine love. I'm going to talk about ecstasy. And I realized when we talk about ecstasy and love, very frequently people think about sex. And that's fine. I may touch on that a little bit, but not necessarily what I'm talking about. And I'm going to talk about the perspective. The spiritual perspective, that all love is divine love. I will get into that I will get into what love is from a spiritual perspective, I will get into why we pursue? Why do we pursue the experience of divine love or why many people pursue the experience of divine love, and why we find that within

and that when you become immersed in divine love, it is ecstatic and blissful and freeing. It is a form of spiritual awakening, for sure. So I want to begin by talking about one of my very favorite spiritual teachers. Now, this is not somebody who I had the honor of meeting in this lifetime. He passed away in 1994. I didn't find out about his teachings until sometime in the 2000s. But and he is maybe not as famous as some other teachers. Because he wasn't he wasn't necessarily out there seeking social approval. He was teaching and really he became better known through his students who, who, you know, published his material and to this day there are you know, at least one or two of them out there still teaching his stuff. So anyway, this teacher, his name was Lester Levinson, le ve n s o n if you want to look him up, founder of what is called now the Sedona Method. But his story is a good one. His story is a great one it It illustrates what can happen with anybody. So Lester was a physicist, a staunch material realists maybe an atheist, I don't know. I don't know about that specifically, but not a very spiritual person. And this story Is that in the 1950s Lester was a fairly young ish guy at that period of time, he had a major heart issue that wound him up in the hospital, I don't know if it was a heart attack or you know what, but a major cardiac issue that wound him in the emergency room. And, you know, medicine being what it was back then. The doctors had no way to treat him. And so they sent him home, they sent him home essentially, to die. They said, Go home, and be comfortable and don't even don't even stand, don't even don't walk a flight of stairs that will do you in that little bit of stress on your heart will do you and so less was either in his late 40s or early 50s. And he went home. And he was kind of, you know, he was angry. All of this as one as happens. And he, you know, got angry that these dogs doctors, how dare they send them home to die? That's, you know, whatever. And, you know, he came to the realization that, well, maybe these doctors are doing all they can, you know, maybe I'm being angry at them for no good reason. And he also said, you know, I'm, you know, I'm a scientist, I'm a physicist, I'm a smart guy, I'm educated. How am I going to figure out my life? How, you know, whatever, whatever is left of it? How am I going to figure all of this out? And what he did was, he systematically converted all of his feelings about people, the doctors, starting with the doctors and whoever, into love, into loving feelings. Now, I know this sounds this might, you know, if you're have not studied his teachings, or done any of the practices, this might sound impossible, how do I just convert my feelings into loving feelings? I'm in there, and there are ways to do that. But he had nothing, you know, he had nothing else to do, he was lying in bed waiting to die. And he cured himself. And he lived into his 80s he lived I don't know, you know, 3040 more years after he was supposed to die. And at the time, modern medicine could not treat him. And he wound up living into the mid 90s. And along the way, he went, you know, you're gonna use this expression, he went free. He had a spiritual awakening, he became enlightened. This is, you know, various terms for what, you know, the spiritual awakening that he went through, from essentially diving into a place of love. Now, I feel like at this point, I need to talk a little bit about love. And define it from a spiritual perspective, because there are all kinds of ideas about love, right? We have the Hallmark Channel, romantic idea of falling in love. You know, the fairy tale version of the princess being rescued, falling in love. We have you know, so very often we think of romantic love. And that's fine. There's nothing wrong with romance. There's nothing wrong with erotic love. All these expressions of love can be beautiful, and loving and wonderful. And love is a really word weird word in English, because we have this one word that we use for many different experiences, right? So you can love your lover you can love your children, you can love chocolate. Those are not the same things. But we say that right in English. And I know in other languages, there are many words for love and Persian, I think they're 85, something like that. So it becomes this generic catch all for fondness or extreme like or whatever. But when we talk about pure love, from a spiritual perspective, that's not exactly what we're talking about.

When we say love, from a spiritual perspective, what we're talking about is approval and acceptance. I like to use the word holding, but I'll have to describe that a little bit, because that might seem strange. Now, if we look at the universe, all there is what you know, and we think of that as an emanation of Source consciousness, you might say, God, or units of the universe, or Brahman, or whatever. But if we look at the consciousness, that is, everything there is that holds everything, there's it, it holds, everything there is every experience, every individual, every thing is held. And there's no greater like, we can place all kinds of human derived conditioned meanings on all kinds of stuff. But there's nothing in this universe that places more importance on me, than the flowers I'm looking at, or the rock, or another person or anything, everything is just held. In the state of acceptance, we might say approval. And when we display disapprove of others, or things or whatever, we are rejecting part of the universe, we're pushing it away.

So what one of the things that Lester did was to, you know, ask himself, can I give this person approval for no good reason, just give them approval, because they are a part of the universe. Over and over again, he asked himself, and it really was just an invitation to give approval. Now, at this point, I know there are people out there, I can sense it, that there are people out there saying, Well, what about this person who abused me or harmed me? Or what about serial killers? Or, you know, this politician or this horrible person from history or whatever? And yeah, there, you know, there is that there is that but you know, and I come from into my spirituality from a history of childhood trauma. So, can I approve of the, you know, the the ones at whose hands I suffered? And then the answer that actually is Yes, I can. And not doing so is more harmful to me than anything else. So this is where forgiveness comes in. And again, I can sense that, well, you know, why would I let so and so off the hook for having done such horrible things? And the answer is you're not you're not letting them off the hook. That is not what forgiveness is. You know, I can forgive the person who stole from me and still take them to court and tried to return my, you know, get my property returned or have the police intercede or whatever. But I'm not disapproving of them as a person. I don't have to accept bad behavior. Right. So when my children were small, one of the things I tried to do and not always successful I was, and still am an amateur parent and not perfect in any way, in any way like that. We all have perfection within us. But, you know, as an, you know, as I, as beingness express myself as this body in this mind, I do things that are sometimes not intended or, you know, wish I hadn't. It's all part of learning, though. But what I would tell my children when they were little, and they were acting up, I would say, I do not like your behavior, I love you. But your behavior is not okay. But I love you, and your behavior does not change how I feel about you as a person. And yeah, I realize it's hard to get there. I do. You know, I've been in an abusive relationship where my partner was, mentally and physically abusive towards me. And I wanted them out of my life. And they are out of my life. How do I you know, hold them in my consciousness when I think about that person. Well, you know, when, when everything happened when this person you know, and I, when we broke up, and they left my life, and I had been severely traumatized by that whole experience, and it had brought up my childhood trauma. You know, one of the things that I recognized was that the emotional charge that I held about this person, the anger and the hurt, and the sadness, and everything all balled into one and anyone who's been through this knows that there's even though the relationship ended dramatically and horribly, and there was abuse and all of these things. And even after the relationship ended, this person was doing things to try to harm me. There was still grief over the loss of the relationship. Isn't that weird? But it's not that's what happens. I realized that holding on to this emotional charge was a not keeping me safe from anything. Because it wasn't that charge was not keeping that person out of my life. In fact, that charge was making me think about that person more and just making me continue to hurt and continue to suffer. So I made it a point to let go of the emotional charge, the negative emotional charge and hold that person in love in my consciousness, not romantic love. Not I want to get back together with this person. Not that I ever want this person back in my life because of the behaviors. But my consciousness of this person is lighter and it's free. Oh my gosh, the freedom the hurt and the anger and the sadness and the grief. Were like heavy chains weighing me down

and now I feel very free of that and that in in I would. I would want this for everyone. I want this feeling for everyone. So again, it's the same thing with, you know, people who have abused me in the past or done, you know, done, done things to me to this body this mind and let go of the emotional charge, and I work, you know, I work to do that whenever it comes up again, I'm not to say, not to say I'm done with my work, I will continue to work on myself for the rest of this lifetime anyway. But it is so freeing, and it's blissful. And it can be ecstatic. So, this love this acceptance, this you know, all of these things. So there's a thing going on in, particularly in the US, currently. And it concerns me that people don't see exactly what has happened, but I'm going to talk politics a little bit. So what happens very frequently in politics is that people have realized that you can gain power over people by having them focus on a common enemy. This is what the Nazis did, right? pre World War Two, they used all kinds of propaganda to turn people against the Jews and the gypsies and people with disabilities and you know, Freemasons and you know, the the Jews primarily, but it was more than that. These people are out to get you they're about to take things that you know, they're going to take things from you x y, z, whatever the thing in the associated them with animals they're inhuman, and which led to you know, of course, the Holocaust, horrible atrocities. And I see this going on right now in American politics, where the enemy of the day has shifted. And people don't even realize it. You know, the new the new enemy for one political faction is you know, trans people. Trans people, drag shows they're out to get your children blah, blah, blah. Creating a threat creating an enemy, so that they can Oh, go with us. We're gonna save you from this enemy that's out to get you. There's been drag shows forever Shakespeare plays were all the female characters were men in drag. You know, and we have, you know, remember the TV show Bosom Buddies and that wasn't the first media thing where people were in drag. It's been going on forever. Suddenly, it's a problem suddenly that you know

look out when people try to tell you who your enemy is. Look out. They do not have your your best interest at heart. They are about controlling you. That being said, let's go back to love and acceptance and approval.

Imagine living in a world where everybody felt safe just being who they are.

Imagine if you always felt safe being who you are expressing who you are expressing or just living your life. And you didn't have to hide anything or justify anything. And if you live like that now congratulations. That's what we should want for everyone. So, I go back to what I call observable qualities of source of God of the universe. There is room for everyone, everyone is held in the universal consciousness, everyone and everything is held without more importance being placed on one thing or another. There's no hierarchy, hierarchy hierarchies are constructed is not part of unconditioned consciousness. Part of spiritual awakening is involves undoing a significant amount of our conditioning, we're conditioned away from being you know, being one with the universe we're conditioned towards being experiencing consciousness as an ego as an individual unconnected from the rest of the universe, but we're all part of the same thing. We are all a part of divinity and you can experience that you can go inside and experience the reality of that you don't have to take my word for it. At initial levels of spiritual awakening, what happens is you get an experience of being interconnected with all things at later levels you know are deeper and more profound levels, you have experiences of non duality, non dual meaning not to not experiencing self and other or subject and object but experiencing everything as one at even deeper levels you experience yourself when you say i your i am Ness your beingness as the entire universe you just happen to be looking through one set of eyes your the entire universe peering through your eyes underneath all of this separation, ego separation and there's subject and object and

underneath all of that is oneness and this is why I say that all love is self love. When I am being loving towards others I am experiencing love here's the secret not necessarily that much of a secret but it's a secret if you want to experience more love and who doesn't become more loving Isn't that an amazing idea? If you want to experience more love don't seek love be loving be in love

now that doesn't mean that you wander around the world starry eyed you know we the we have this stereotypical I know hippie I guess for lack of a better term from movies and TV. You know, throwing flowers on everyone and whatever you don't have in there's nothing wrong with that. You don't have to be like that. It's just when you encounter any experience other beings. You work towards generating the feeling of love towards them. Until that becomes your natural state How do you know that is your natural state? Well, you will feel this warm sense of bliss of peace. Of, of ecstasy. Now I'm not talking necessarily about sexual ecstasy, although that can be a part of it when, you know, when you're with a partner, or by yourself or with multiple partners, whatever, you know, and again, our sexual morality is about kin cultural conditioning. So we let go of, we let go of judgment.

And we become more sex positive, we say, you know, as long as pleasure seeking is consensual by all parties. And consent is pretty straightforward. Everybody has to agree to everything at all times, anybody can stop agreeing at any time, everybody needs to be an adult. Children can't consent animals can't consent. People who are unconscious can't consent. That's kind of it. If you are having sexual activity, whether that is alone, or with a partner, or with more than one person, other person, and you can hold yourself and anyone else involved in love, and complete acceptance and utter approval, that's when you get this intimacy.

Right, that will make the experience deeper, and more blissful. And I would say, spiritual. If you have never experienced that in your sex life, you're you know, you're in, you're in for something life changing. We'll put it this way. And if you know, again, if you're, if you're asexual, that's fine. If you're, you know, if you're alone, if this you can do this, you can do this practice during masturbation. And that's, you know, that is also a beautiful experience. It's an experience of self love. But here's the thing. And I said this before, and I'll I'll explain that all love is self love. What do I mean by that? Well, I go back to the idea that we're all we all come from the same source. We're all expressions of beingness. Of, of consciousness. You know, I remember they're listening to a recording an audio recording of Lester Levinson, who I talked about at the beginning of the podcast. And he had been like, he went to some spiritual conference. And he didn't know that he was going to be asked to speak. But they asked him to speak and he's in it basically, imperturbable you couldn't, you know, mess this guy up? So he's like, sure, you know, whatever. And he got up and he said, I don't know if I'm supposed to talk about me, or talk about you. Like, talk about me talk about you? What's the difference? And people kind of laughed. And he was using humor, as he often did. And I liked that. I like the use of humor to explain spiritual principles and get to understanding. There's so much out there that spirituality, spirituality is sacred and you know, laughter, laughter and joy and all of these things don't belong in spirituality. It's hogwash. There are times for all of it. There. There's times for all of that experience laughter and love and joy are all part of all you know, all a part of it. And when you get to a certain level, all of your experience is spiritual, all of it. Your very consciousness isn't is in, you know, an experience of spirit. No matter how we get trapped in the 3d, physical world, you realize that even that is spiritual, even the expression of this physical world in our consciousness is a spiritual experience. You're having a spiritual experience right now not just because not because you're listening to me talk on a podcast that would be very egoic of me, right? Anytime you listen to me is a spiritual experience. True, but not because listening to anybody else is not a spiritual spiritual experience, all experience a spiritual all love is self love. Because there is no difference between you and I underneath at all. So when I love you, I am loving myself

so again, you know, the question sometimes arises, what about serial killers? Or people who committed genocide? Or, you know, these people who did these horrible things? Yes, we can agree that these things that they did were horrible. But, you know, and coming from a place of ego, a place of delusion. Because to do that, to do something horrible like that. You have to experience others as separate from you. Right. And when we do horrible things to other people, we're doing it, we're doing it to ourselves, because there is no difference. But how do we like, there's so much emotional charge with somebody who's done these horrible things? How do we hold them in love and again, we don't we don't approve of those things. We don't say, oh, you know, I need to be in love. So genocide is okay, or being a serial killer or you know, being an arsonist or you know, doing those things, we don't have to be okay with that. Underneath the people underneath that behavior underneath the, the ego, the twisted conditioning is pure beingness. And we're attached to that. As much as we might, you know, as much as our egos might not like to be we're attached at a level of pure spirit and ultimately, holding on to anger and hatred and all of those things that harms nobody but us.

Right now the ego. The ego is a trickster. It's your very own trickster spirit. Congratulations. how useful the ego says if I give these things up, you will be unsafe. It feels that way, doesn't it? If I give up my anger if I give up my hatred, I will be unsafe. This body might die. Well, I've got a little bit of news for you. If you have a body It will eventually die. The body that I am using to speak to you on this podcast will die. I know there are people out there who are like, Oh, we're, you know, if we can study sharks that live for 600 years and, you know, find out, you know, tweak genetics and whatever, we might be able to prevent people from dying forever. Can you imagine what a hellhole on earth that would create in about a single generation when there's not enough food or water for everybody to live? And wars breakout? Because there's, I mean, people would start dying from warfare, that's for sure. But nobody ever, you know, grew old and died

imagine doubling the earth's population every 10 years or so.

You know, so I can't, I can't imagine that. I'm not, you know, I'm part of that the quest for physical immortality. Foremost is ego. Now, there are stories of spiritual masters like Baba Ji, for example, in the Himalayas, said that he's been alive for hundreds of years that people still sometimes run into him and study with him. I don't know the truth of the matter there. You know, but you know, this, if that is a true story, and it does almost doesn't matter if it is or isn't because the, the teachings are good and all of that. This is not somebody who's, you know, populating, you know, having a bunch having 20 Kids and populating the earth and then those kids are living forever and having each one of them having 20 kids and you know, it's different. It's different situation. Anyway, um, I want to talk a little bit about my grandmother for a moment. Now, my grandmother passed away a couple of years, a couple of weeks ago, at the end of February, a few days after my birthday in February, she passed away. She was 106 years old. And I absolutely love my grandmother. Wonderful, interesting, quirky, lady, very religious, very spiritual woman. Not from a judgy perspective, or whatever. Just her faith was really important to her. And as I still remember this as a child, this lesson that she taught me because she taught, she taught in her church for many years, she teach Bible lessons. She was a reader in her church, and she taught, she taught Sunday school, I went to Sunday school with her and she would always, she would bribe us with candy bars after if we went to Sunday school with her. So she said, somebody had asked her, you know, what is her idea of heaven? And what is her idea of hell? And she said, when I am angry with somebody, when I'm full of hatred and rage, and and all of these things, I'm in hell, I'm in hell right here. I'm suffering right here on Earth. That's what hell is like. But when I am loving, when I am being loving, and when I am when I am being kind and generous and loving towards others than I am in heaven. What a brilliant piece of wisdom from, you know, from this woman who was born in 1916 in rural Maine. And what a brilliant piece of wisdom she was talking about her own consciousness and her ability to experience heaven and hell right here on Earth. As I speak to you right now, I just I have to say this I'm looking at my back window. There are three deer that just trotted through my backyard and what a beautiful I just love to see wildlife and these beautiful Oh 345 There's more trotting through now. I love to see this I love to see wildlife and so I thought I would share that with you. It just creates this beautiful feeling in me when I see these beautiful beautiful animals walking through and I love I love where I lived for that and just lovely just lovely. Anyway I thought I would share because i i Am I being loving towards you, my my dear listener. Anyway, this is where I will leave this for today. And I hope you will put some of this into prayer practice into mind think about it a little bit. I hope you're happy and healthy. I wish you all the best. And I do love you

Announcer 46:22

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

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

Ep15 Love and Finding Your true Purpose

Announcer 0:31

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

John Moore 0:50

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

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

Rebecca Quave 2:29

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

John Moore 2:33

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

Rebecca Quave 2:45

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

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

John Moore 2:53

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

Rebecca Quave 4:29

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

John Moore 6:41

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

Rebecca Quave 7:40

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

John Moore 7:51

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

Rebecca Quave 9:17

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

John Moore 9:59

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

Rebecca Quave 10:03

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

John Moore 10:10

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

Rebecca Quave 10:57

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

John Moore 11:15

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

Rebecca Quave 12:50

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

John Moore 14:59

I really Love that

Rebecca Quave 15:00

that makes sense.

John Moore 15:02

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

Rebecca Quave 16:39

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

John Moore 18:07

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

Rebecca Quave 18:36

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

John Moore 19:00

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

Rebecca Quave 19:05

certified, certified, whatever

John Moore 19:09

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

Rebecca Quave 19:14

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

John Moore 19:40

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

Rebecca Quave 19:58

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

John Moore 20:03

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

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

Rebecca Quave 21:17

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

John Moore 22:19

Yeah, but I

Rebecca Quave 22:20

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

John Moore 22:25

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

Rebecca Quave 22:54

just keep poking yourself, don't just

John Moore 22:55

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

Rebecca Quave 23:44

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

John Moore 25:25

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

Rebecca Quave 25:52

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

John Moore 26:09

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

Rebecca Quave 26:15

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

John Moore 26:57

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

Rebecca Quave 27:05

exactly no harm in that writing lactation engineer

John Moore 27:08

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

Unknown Speaker 27:59

so getting more aware of that natural alignment

John Moore 28:02

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

Rebecca Quave 28:42

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

John Moore 32:27

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

Rebecca Quave 33:20

ultimately, then all the same noise.

John Moore 33:23

Yes, yeah. It's

Rebecca Quave 33:24

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

John Moore 33:45

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

Rebecca Quave 35:26

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

John Moore 36:29

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

Rebecca Quave 37:57

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

John Moore 39:45

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

Rebecca Quave 40:02

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

John Moore 40:31

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

Rebecca Quave 42:32

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

John Moore 42:53

right

Rebecca Quave 42:54

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

John Moore 43:35

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

Rebecca Quave 43:52

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

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

John Moore 45:17

I think,

Rebecca Quave 45:18

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

John Moore 45:33

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

Rebecca Quave 46:05

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

John Moore 48:08

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

Rebecca Quave 48:37

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

John Moore 48:45

right.

Rebecca Quave 48:47

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

John Moore 48:51

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

Rebecca Quave 48:57

Yeah, this is a thought.

John Moore 49:00

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

Rebecca Quave 49:40

Yeah, expectation is the number one obstacle.

John Moore 49:44

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

Rebecca Quave 49:54

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

John Moore 50:25

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

Rebecca Quave 51:13

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

John Moore 51:53

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

Rebecca Quave 51:59

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

John Moore 52:35

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

Rebecca Quave 52:51

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

John Moore 53:00

Fantastic. And here's here's our outro

Announcer 53:31

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