The Ego, a term widely used in both psychoanalysis and spirituality, but what is it really? Is it evil and bad? Do we need to destroy the ego for spiritual growth?

Spiritual teacher, John Moore talks about the ego, self-esteem, and ultimately identity with divinity and interconnectedness with all things.

When you act from a sense of separation, you unknowingly affect yourself - this is karma. Everything is connected to everything.

Announcer 0:28

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

John Moore 0:47

Hello, everybody.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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