Spiritual egotism is rampant today with the commercialization of everything. Some self-appointed gatekeepers want to lock people out of their chosen paths to spiritual healing.

As well-intentioned as they may be, their efforts are frequently problematic and not framed by good information.

Shamanic teacher, John Moore offers an alternative way to think about cultural appropriation and a way to approach people who are on a spiritual path. There is a way to include people spiritually, but not exploit or disrespect cultures.

John calls for more connection and less separation. Spiritually we are all the same, and all connected.

Life is hard enough without adding the global pandemic. How do we support each other's spiritual journey with less judgment and less egotism?

Announcer 0:28

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

John Moore 0:45

Hello, everybody.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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