This episode explores the true will from a spiritual perspective. How does spiritual sovereignty allow us to express who we are truly meant to be? How do we find our true life path?

The infamous Aleister Crowley channeled the law of Thelema as, "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law." Does that mean do whatever the heck you want?

Announcer 0:28

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

John Moore 0:43

And so, let's say, you know, let's say it is your path, it is your true path to explore Wicca or witchcraft or, or practice magic or that sort of thing. Well, there's going to be all of these cultural influences, right? They're going to be people who, who put pressure on you, and their culture applies pressure on you, and, and all of those things. So in that way, you know, that can interfere with your spiritual sovereignty with your ability to stand in your true spiritual path. You know, myself, I practice shamanism. And there are a lot of misconceptions about that. So, you know, a while back, I was, a couple years ago, I was teaching a class, in shamanism, and out of the blue, this individual contacted me, I've never spoken to this person before or anything, but somehow he had seen my class. And he called me a fraud. And he said that he was, you know, representing Native American people in the area. And they, they want him to put a stop to what I was doing. I don't know the truth of that at all. But I make it very clear that I don't practice Native American spirituality. I don't steal Native American tools. I don't pretend to be Native American. I don't dress up as a Native American. And I have seen that done. I've seen very recently, pictures from people doing shamanic work in Portugal, and they were dressed as they were dressed as planes, Native Americans with full war bonnets and war paint on and these were, you know, Portuguese people with no Native American Heritage misusing misusing those symbols. And that that's not something that I do. But still, there are those people out there who think that's what I'm doing for some strange reason. You know, most shamanism isn't Native American and not all Native American forms of spirituality were shamanic. So, you know, that the idea there is not doesn't hold weight. And this, you know, I would have preferred to engage this individual in a concrete conversation to, you know, better inform him about what I was doing. But he had already had already made up his mind. And so, you know, I didn't, I didn't change what I did, I don't change what I teach. But I do I did add, I did add a segment to when I'm teaching an introduction to shamanism class. I add a sec, I've added a section now about cultural appropriation, and how what we're doing is not you know, Native American spirituality even though it has been misperceived as that by people who are maybe well meaning but very misinformed. So there's cultural pressures, right? Um, they're also they're also spiritual pressures. There's all kinds of stuff going on, spiritually. When I see clients for Healing Sessions, very frequently, people have you know, all kinds of things going on, they might have soul loss as a really common one, which is a result of trauma. Or they might have intrusions which we pick up when people direct angry thoughts at us or we just walk into a place where there has been violence or some other you know, really, really what people might call negative vibes or negative energy. And sometimes that stuff sticks to us, and we walk around with it. And it blocks us from being a clear channel to spirit and shamanism we call being a clear channel, the spirit becoming the hollow bone. If you think about a hollow bone, it's like a tube, an empty tube. And in some cultures, they, you know, they would blow through a tube to do spiritual work, you know, blowing. So, you know, soul parts back into somebody's body or energy or what have you. And obviously, you can't do that if the bone isn't hollow. And so when shamans talk about becoming a hollow bone or talking about is, you know, getting rid of the interference,

and becoming a clear channel for spiritual work through us. This isn't a level, it's not a level of shamanism, I have reached the hollow bone level, you know, I have a background in martial arts, and a lot of people like, you know, aim to attain the level of black belt, and it doesn't hold, you know, holds individual meaning for people, but like, universally, that doesn't mean a whole lot. Because they're, you know, I can go to a certain school and get my black belt in a year, or, you know, in my school, it took 10 years. So there's a big difference between, there's no standardization, there's but but people place a lot of emphasis on levels. And shamanism is not patriarchal, it's not a pyramid scheme, there aren't levels, anything. So it's really what it is. It's an ongoing process. It's an ongoing thing of working on oneself, to become more and more that hollow bone. And whether if that's true, whether you're doing healing work on yourself, or just on, you know, on yourself or for others, or you're not doing healing work, and you're just using shamanic tools for spiritual revelation, direct revelation, you want to clear out the channel, so you can receive messages from spirit, without, you know, with less interference, so there's a bunch of stuff that can get stuck to us. And working on clearing that out. There's also a lot of stuff we carry around, we have, we have a shadow, right, this is the term that young coined for exiled parts of ourselves. So for example, you know, I might have been raised in a family where men being artistic was looked at as a masculine, and masculinity is a bad thing. And so there was shame attached to that, and I might have repressed artistic urges, those would be in my shadow somewhere. And until I pull those up and confront those, and you know, integrate them with myself, I am not going to be whole and there's going to be parts of myself that force me to act up in unpredictable ways in ways that I wouldn't normally do that. And so that's one example. But there's a lot of stuff we crammed down into our shadow could be like, anger, right, some people. And this isn't to say that you should fly off the handle, and attack people whenever you're angry. So you're not sticking that in your shadow. No, there are good ways to express anger. And there are out of control ways to express anger. And you have a right to feel your feelings, whatever they are. And so a lot of times we stuff our feelings. You know, and in the place where I grew up, you know, men really only allowed to express to emotions, and that would be humor, or anger. And everything else was seen as a masculine. And so men didn't cry. We heard that there's a famous song called Boys, boys don't cry. And, you know, that was something I was taught growing up, boys don't cry. You know, and my father would, you know, if my brother and I would cry about something when we were little, I'll give you something to cry about. And it was a threat of violence and so you stuffed you stuffed that. You stuffed that down. And that stuff definitely interferes with recognizing your true path following your true path. Exercising true will and so I Highly recommend to everyone who has who lives and who has ever lived in who will ever live, to do some kind of Shadow Work, Shadow integration, we all have shadows.

I don't care who you are. And I have seen that I have seen people who were recognized as enlightened teachers, who had large followings of people who committed suicide, or who sexually abused followers, or who wind up drinking themselves to death or all kinds of stuff. And so, these are people who might have woken up. And the philosopher Ken Wilber talks about waking up growing up and cleaning up, right. So waking up is, you know, sort of enlightenment or, you know, having having spiritual realizations. And, you know, some people gain I have, you know, I have witnessed, it's rare, but I have witnessed people who have exhibited powers that can be said to be supernatural, like, crazy stuff. You know, not stage magic stuff, but like some really, really weird phenomena, with with people who have developed themselves spiritually to a certain level. And we sometimes mistake that we sometimes think that this is that this person is perfected, somehow, right? Maybe they are the Buddha, or maybe they are Jesus, or Muhammad or what have you. And they are perfected being without flaws without sin, and nothing in their shadow. And that is not always true, and often not true. Because all of a sudden, you have somebody who hasn't done their Shadow Work, who hasn't done their cleanup work. Right, and they are abusing people, or, you know, sexually, physically financially abusing people, or they are harming themselves through chemical dependence, or committing suicide, or you know, all kinds of things. So these are people ultimately, who have not done their cleanup, and they I don't know, for sure, because I haven't lived their lives. But you know, I think that very frequently, there is a very high level of spiritual bypassing going on meaning, well, I have reached enlightenment now, so I don't have to worry about these things anymore. And there is nothing in my shadow, I have no ego anymore. And those things just aren't true. They're just not true, unless you know, I have not experienced anyone for whom That is true. Whether you know, observing in person or from afar. And so, there is this, when you develop, we call the astral body or the soul body, and that develops and that can develop significantly, you can do all kinds of things there. What comes along with that very often is hubris, right, this sense of, I am bigger, more powerful, pure, whatever, then I actually am a distorted sense of self. And a distorted sense of self isn't ego, it's a distorted ego, you still have a sense of yourself. And so, this is a thing, where, where spiritual abilities, cities in some, you know, in Sanskrit, I guess, can interfere with spiritual realization. I do know of one person and just from stories I never met this person is American teacher named Lester Levinson, he passed away I think, in the 90s. He was the originator of what is now called the Sedona Method. And, you know, according to people who knew him, you know, and studied with him or whatever he developed, you know, as a side effect of his spiritual work, not it was not The intention of his spiritual work, the whole intention of his spiritual work was to go free. Right, whatever that, you know, whatever that happens to mean in this context, that was the focus, but along the way, he developed some

And, you know, the famous infamous occultist magician, Yogi, what have you, Alastair Crowley, some people will know him as you know, the beast and associate him with the devil and all these things. And a lot of that was his own doing he loved, he loved PR, he was definitely a larger than life, character, and loved even bad press. He was very dramatic. You know, and by all reports, he was not what we would consider these days, a very nice person, he was definitely abusive towards women, towards men towards his followers, you know, didn't take care of his children. There were all you know, all kinds of things going on with this guy. However, he did write a very, you know, many influential works on magic and occultism. And, you know, Raja, yoga, and, gosh, all kinds of stuff. And his most famous work, I would say, which is, you know, the first one that he penned, supposedly, with this spirits, this angel or what have you, standing over his shoulder, dictating it to him, while he was in Cairo, Egypt on his honeymoon, after having spent his honeymoon night in the king's chamber of the Great Pyramid, kind of a cool, kind of a cool story. He wrote his LIBOR Val L. legalese, or book of the law, which, if you tried to read is going to be you know, if you don't, you don't do some research. And you know, it's going to be a little bit challenging. I do have, I do have a couple of annotated copies of that, and some commentary on it, and have, you know, read a bit about it, because it's an important, it's a seminal thing that has shaped a lot of modern thought on spirituality. And so from that book, there is the law of Salima, which is what he called his organization, or his philosophy, maybe not his organization, but his philosophy and the the, you know, the practices are called the olema. And people who practice are called phony mites. Or they call themselves that, I guess. And so, you know, the most famous law to come out of that the law of the Lima is, do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law. Right, so do what thou wilt, shall be the whole of the law. Unfortunately, there's not a whole lot of description of what that means in that book. There's lots of commentary, and there's lots of other things. And so people who are not steeped in that type of learning, hear that. And I, you know, I know, this was my take on it. When I first read, I'm like, Oh, well, really, what he's saying is, do whatever you want, do what you will do what you want. And that's the whole that's it. That's the entire law, do whatever you want. You know, shoot people, if you want to shoot people, burn down people's houses, rape and pillage, because if that's what you want to do, that's the entire law. You know, when they will tell you that is not at all what that law means. It is not. It does not mean do whatever you want. Even though, you know, Crowley might have done a lot of whatever he wanted. And then some done some things that we would consider not so nice. But that's not the intention about the law. The intention is the the will they're talking about here is the true will, your true spiritual will. And really this is about following your spiritual path, not the path necessarily that you were born. Born into because your parents belong to a specific church or religion or, or were atheists or what have you. Um, and, you know, not,

you know, not the way society thinks you should believe. And, you know, so again, this is really about a path of self, Revelation, it's about following your own path. But you have to discover what that is. And that's the work. That's the work we all have to do. And it is about, it's about throwing aside the pressures that culture puts on us and throwing, you know, and working on ourselves to surface our shadow material and integrate it and, you know, do you know, the way that it was done through the limos, lots and lots of ritual, lots of studying lots of ritual magic, lots of group rituals, and, you know, that sort of thing. And that is not my particular bent, although I find a lot of that stuff really fascinating. You know, a lot of initiation, a lot of changing, changing, shaking up your spiritual makeup to find what it is that you are in alignment with. Um, so for me, you know, I do feel like helping people find their spiritual sovereignty, helping them feel like they're connected, and living, you know, discovering their true path. And living true to that living true to themselves. As a spiritual being as a as a spark of the Divine, I do feel like that is at least a part, if not, you know, the major part of my true will. Because what happens is, spirit kind of knocks you around a little bit, and it can be rough. I had a rough time, at the beginning of it. I've gone through several rough periods, we call those initiations in shamanism, where I might go through a health crisis, or a mental health crisis, or, you know, my life might fall apart, might get divorced, might lose jobs, all kinds of stuff can happen. And sometimes it happens all at once. And, you know, it's about kind of breaking down that ego a little bit, and shaking things up. And so you, you write the ship, and he becomes stronger for it. Sort of, like, you know, if you break a bone, and it heals properly, it will frequently heal stronger than before it was broken. Right, it's kind of the same thing. being shaken, having a dark night of the soul frequently makes people come out stronger on the other side, even though it seems like the end of the world while you're going through it. So sweet spiritual sovereignty is really about getting rid of the interference, the static, getting rid of the noise, and following the clear signal that feels, you know, when you click into it, it will feel natural, it will feel it will feel good, it will feel like home, it will feel like this is where I am supposed to be. And that was you know, honestly, that was what shamanism became for me when I was working in, you know, working through apprenticeships, and, you know, there was a point in time in the beginning, where I was, you know, resistant and, you know, didn't like doing a lot of the things and was scared of part of it. And there was a point where it all really clicked for me. And I, you know, said this is home, this is home for me, and this is my spiritual home. And so I feel like I'm following my true path. I'm teaching, teaching and doing these podcasts and writing articles and books and being quoted in the media and all kinds of stuff. That feels like an even bigger part of it. I love that part. I love being able to talk about this stuff and have people listen it's very, very rewarding for me. Because I hope you know my one goal with things like that is that I'm making a positive impact that I'm that I'm helping people in Any small way, seek out their true will and follow that

and do what thou wilt. Right? Do that, what your true will do it. And that's not to say that your true will is necessarily a path towards spiritual leadership of any kind. I don't know what your true path is, you know, part of it will involve, you know, everything we do, if you do it, if you go deep enough with anything you do, it becomes spiritual. I'm fully convinced of that. If you see a really good athlete, when they are in the zone, we'll take basketball, for example, when somebody is just playing amazing basketball, and their ego kind of drops away. And the game is sort of being is playing through them. I think that they are having a spiritual experience. And it's sort of like, you know, martial arts, like kendo can jitsu, you know, sword arts and things like that. Where there is a tremendous amount of focus required single pointed focus as a form of, you know, meditation, and you can go deeper and deeper and it becomes meditative. Right? You know, there are there is Zen archery, for example, people shoot bows and arrows, and it's make it into a meditative practice. And I think you can do that with anything, I think you can do it with computer programming, I think you can do it with baking, you can do it with riding your bike, you can make anything, a mindful spiritual practice. So I, you know, I don't know what your true path is. But I would love it if more and more people would find that what a world we would live in. Right, what a world we live in. I've said this to clients. I've had clients who were fantastic artists, for example, and sort of afraid to put their stuff out in the world, because what if people criticized it and this and that, and, you know, I'm, you know, my thought to them was will, you know, your art or your photography, or your music, or what have you is really taking something, you know, is really a way for you to express your spirit, it's a way for your spirit to speak to other people. And yeah, I mean, that will be intimidating for some people. And some people will be haters there that just exists everywhere. You know, it's like the guy who contacted me, who called me a fraud for teaching shamanism, and said it was his mission in life to stop me from doing what I was doing. Um, you know, that didn't stop me from doing what I was doing, because this is my path. And so, what I have to offer, and what you have to offer, and what my clients have to offer, and what everybody has to offer, the world is far more important than what the criticizers have to offer, than what the haters have to offer. And that form of criticism and hatred, and you can see it in the comment section of any YouTube video or anything online. The people just spewing the most vile stuff there. That is some base shadow stuff. That is some, that is some, you know, why do people feel the need to do that? Why would somebody who is happy and secure and spiritually developed, feel the need to criticize or hate on or insult people they have never met. Or people they've met for that matter, but people they have never met go online and lash out like that and take satisfaction from that. Think about that. Think about how much stuff that person has not confronted. Why that why that action is satisfying for them. The level of insecurity that comes through their the level of projection That comes through there.

You know, and almost anybody that's going to attack you in any way, is going to project a bunch of stuff onto you. Um, you know, I've definitely been through some tumultuous relationships where that was, where that was a norm, and been sucked into that myself to be honest. It's hard, it's hard, I do my best, we all do our best, but I am not going to fool myself into thinking I am not human, you don't have a shadow. And I don't have work to do, because I do. But I do my work. And I do it constantly. And I've been doing it for a long time. And I will continue doing it probably for the rest of my life. While I'm capable, I will work on myself. You know, and part of that is because I believe it is the most important thing for me to follow my true will, is the most important thing in my life, to do that. And the other reason is, you know, how I show up in the world is really important to me. I have children, I have a girlfriend, and she has children, my, my children and their children might have children someday, and I'll have grandchildren. And I will, you know, let me tell you, I am going to spoil the heck out of my grandchildren. I love kids, but it is my responsibility to leave this world a better place than it was when I came into it. And the best way I can do that is to show up authentically for the people I love, particularly the people in generations, you know, generations beyond me. So for my children, and even you know, their friends even and their grandchildren, like how many? How many lives? Do you touch through your children? How much of an impact can you make on the world? By showing if you have children? Or if you even if you don't have children, the example you can set for for children? What kind of what kind of world are you going to leave? And if you show up in a bold way, and yeah, it's hard. But if you show up in a bold way, and live out your true self, live out your true will follow your path. You're setting an example for others to do the same. And I believe if that is the if more and more people do that, accept that and don't try to stuff others into tiny little boxes. And repress what people really want to do. Or really, you know, not even want to do what they will to do. Right? What is the true path we don't prep, you know, press that down and make people live their life in shame or, or not for unfulfilled? or what have you. What a fantastic world we'll live in. It will live in a world full of art and music and invention. And, you know, spiritually enlightened people. And fantastic literature and all kinds of things, all kinds of things. Because people are not, you know, people are not you know, repressed people don't aren't held back from experiencing their true path and living out their true path. So, once again, spiritual sovereignty is the ability to follow your true will without interference. And I could say spiritual interference, but you know, there's a fine line between what is spiritual and what is completely mental and what is cultural. Right. But the true will aspect is really a spiritual thing. It's really the deepest part of you, expressing itself into the world. It is the divine spark. The divine light that is within you that is within everybody that is within every spirit. It was Every soul has at its center.

This, you know, amazing, bright light. That's how, you know, it's how I experienced it and journey. And that light is, you know, part of the whole of divine of divinity, you could say God, you could say the universe, you could say, whatever, whatever name you want to slap on it. So I look at it this way, if I were to take, if I had a beam of white light, right, and I held a prism up to that white light, right? You know, a glass prism, it would split, it could split that light into lots of different colors look like separate, perhaps look like separate and beams of light of different colors. And, but ultimately, they are all part of that original white light. Because if you take away that white light, if I then took, you know, something and blocked the light, those beams those individual colors, as individual beams of light would not come through the prison. Because their source is the beam of white light. And so that is a good metaphor for divinity for God for the god force, whatever what ever you want to call it. And we are the beams of colored light. We are diverse, we appear differently. We, you know, we think conceive of ourselves as individuals. as separate. separation is about, you know, ego is really about separation. But our sources that divinity and if you were to take that divinity away, we wouldn't exist. So we exist as an extension as a spark, as a beam. And, you know, we're individual individuals, but underneath it all, we are all connected to divinity in the same way. We're all the same product of that white light. And without that there is nothing, there's no existence, nothing happens. Not even emptiness, because emptiness is a thing. So anyway, that I'm going I'm going deep into theology here, and I kind of want to wrap it up, we're coming to the end of about an hour of podcast. I hope this has been interesting and useful and given you something to think about. Think about consider meditate on way, finding your true path. And again, you'll know it, it will click the universe will move obstacles, either in your way or out of your way that nudge you towards your true path. And it's your job to listen to those to pay attention to those to see what see what the universe is telling you. Some obstacles are meant to be leftover or crashed through and some are Oh, I'm really steering off the path here. Really doing something I shouldn't be doing time steer it back onto the path. Without I will leave you I hope to hear from you. Feel free to contact me through my website. And I will talk to you next time. I hope you stay safe and sane and healthy. And I love you all.

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