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

Ep19 Sex Positive Spirituality

Announcer 0:31

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

John Moore 0:49

Hello, everybody.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Announcer 1:03:36

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