Our ideas about sex, sexuality, and gender primarily come from our culture's influences. Shamanic teacher, John Moore, explores the patriarchal views about sex and spirituality. From a shamanic perspective, ethical sexual practices are a powerful tool for mind, body and spirit healing.

Shamans around the world are part of their cultures, but when exploring sex in the spiritual realm - traditional viewpoints giving control over ourselves to unseen authority starts to break down.

A shaman is always concerned with power - not power over others, but the power to heal, gain information, and to protect others. Merging spirituality with sex is a way to explore incredible power.

Announcer 0:28

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

John Moore 0:47

Hello, everybody.

It's been a little while since I've done an episode,

I have been so busy.

as I record this, we have just crossed over the autumnal equinox here in the northern hemisphere.

It is late in September, whenever you listen to this, it might be a different day and time,

of course, but

that's what it is here.

Hope you're all doing well.

On a, you know, just on a personal note I've been

going through some stuff is not the right way to describe it. It's not like I'm in the middle of a house purchase, which is been relatively complex. And I will consider it an initiation because it has been very stressful and lots of things have gone really wonky and weird with the whole thing. So

one of the things that happened

in the middle of the purchase, so after I'd signed the agreement to purchase the house, they the town changed the address of the house like reassigned a new address to the house. So it rendered the purchase agreement.

Null without an amendment it made the title search hard, it made the all kinds of stuff. So hopefully we're coming to a close on that anyway. One of the many reasons why I haven't done an episode in a while, but I hope this is a good one. I want today I'm going to talk about

sex, shamanism and spirituality.

And not you know, I'm not I'm this isn't going to be dirty talk, this isn't going to be about you know,

I don't know.

It's not.

We're not gonna get down and dirty here. But I want to talk about

kind of the politics of sex and sexuality and gender, and how they intersect with shamanism from my perspective and spirituality as a whole.

Now, I grew up in the New England region of the United States where I live now where I've spent my entire life.

And New England primarily was settled by when when European colonists came in.

Primarily, we're talking about Puritans here.

And there's still a very puritanical view, an undercurrent in the culture around sex. And it's really strange to me. But

one thing to remember about the Puritans is they were Calvinists, right. And they believed that pleasure was a sin, anything that you could enjoy was a sin. So things like dancing, things like a really drank a lot. They drank, they drank a lot, because the water was not potable. And they didn't know how to make it potable. So they, they drank almost nothing but beer. Kind of interesting to think about drunk pilgrims, but that's the way it was. And so things like playing cards could get you expelled from the community. In fact, one of my one of my European ancestors was expelled from his community, for he got caught playing cards.

And so not everybody, not everybody who came here was a Puritan. Because, you know, on the on these voyages across the ocean, the Mayflower and whatever,

you know, the crew sometimes wasn't, and some of the people they were hired people, and they had indentured servants, and they had, you know, just all kinds of

Different types of people who came here, but they had the power. And this led to

things like the witch trials. And you know, we think of Salem, Salem was the most famous, but there were lots of people.

You know, lots of people in other communities, one of my ancestors, as a matter of fact, was arrested as a witch not executed, thank goodness.

You know, she, somebody hurt her father actually purchased her freedom,

which tells you what the witch trials were, you know, primarily an economic exercise in stealing property from people and seeking revenge on people and stuff like that. So the puritanical view of sex is still very still existent. Now our culture has changed a lot and the culture in you know, our culture is affected by sort of the cross pollination now when I grew up, you know, was born in the 70s, kind of came of age in the 80s and early 90s.

We didn't have the internet, we didn't have exposure, the same way. We had exposure to TV. And I remember getting cable for the first time, I don't know how old I was nine or 10, before we could get cable TV,

you know, starting to talk like, you know, when my grandparents when I was a child, XYZ, right.

Walked uphill both ways in the snow to go to school.

But when I was, you know, when I was a child, we didn't have a lot of exposure. Sesame Street was as multicultural as it got. Now, I live in Maine, and I grew up in Maine, and Maine is a the oldest state with the highest

average age, we have a very aging population. It also happens to be the least diverse state in the country. We might say it's the whitest state in the country.

Not a lot of diversity here.

You know, it's still that way a little bit, although we have a lot more immigrant immigration coming into the state.

We have a, you know, a larger Somali population and people from

people from all over now starting to come to the state, but it hasn't changed the demographic too much. So predominantly, white Protestant. You know, some people might use the term Wasp, I don't know if that's offensive or not white Anglo Saxon Protestant people, predominantly, and those people holding a you know, holding the power holding the reins of government holding, you know, whatever. Now, the demographic changed in a lot of places. So in,

in the Massachusetts area, particularly Boston area, you had large influxes of immigrants, you have a large Italian community, you have a large Irish community, you have a large community from Asia, you have in Boston, you have a Chinatown, that had a lot of Chinese people. But there are also a lot of people from, you know, Vietnam, there's a lot of people from Malaysia, there's a lot of people from Indonesia there.

So you have a lot of people

coming from different cultures into this into this area, and it makes it more cosmopolitan.

But where I live in where I grew up, things were very, you know, very, still still very much the same and homogenous. But things have changed. I look at the next generation with hope they are much more open and accepting of different cultures, they reject. Not everybody, of course, because they're still people, they're still the younger generation, some people are

living up to their parents ideals of racism and bigotry and all of those things. But it's, it's, it is changing. The culture is changing. And I think for the better.

And I see my you know, my children is being very open, having friends from all different walks of life, all different cultures,

different political spectrum, different, you know, all kinds of stuff much more accepting

than my generation, and certainly my parents generation, and certainly my grandparents generation.

So I think I think those things are good, but they still had a there's still this undercurrent of anything that is pleasurable, is sinful.

That is a view.

It might not be spoken. But let me tell you,

I want to talk about culture a little bit, because this is really important, is really important aspect.

Culture is hard to view because we live in it. And it is mostly invisible.

And I remember, I remember in grad school, in, I can't remember the exact course that I was taking. But it was essentially it was talking about culture, and culture and conflict or something like that. And

the professor had this weird, he was like, what do we think culture is we spent almost the whole semester trying to define culture, which I thought was kind of a waste of time and his definition. I was like, Yeah, I don't agree with that. And he was taken aback.

Culture, when we think about culture, you might think about, you know, food, and music and language and all of those things. Those are the outward expressions of culture.

But culture is invisible culture is this invisible homogenizing force. It is, it is a set of shared norms that are oftentimes unspoken.

They're they're enforced through things like social rejection.

Right? So if I were to do something that was so outside, outrageous, from my, from whatever culture I'm in,

I could run the risk of being socially rejected. So going back to my boyhood, right, in the, in the will say, in the 80s, when I was got to be like a teenager, and I was in high school.

Being gay, for example,

you could face violence for that, not just social rejection.

But there were you know, there were people getting killed.

For being gay. Now, that still happens in many places in the world.

And there's still violence against, you know, there's still violence against that community. But it's, it's, it's changed significantly, not 100%, not as much as it should be, since I was a kid. But this is an example of culture, enforcing norms. The norm being,

you know, heterosexuality is the thing. That's, you know, everything else is unnatural. Sometimes that's not unspoken. Sometimes, you know, you will have, you know, religious institutions, certain very

conservative religious institutions that will speak out.

Right now.

Right now,

in this country, the right in the United States. Anyway, the right wing is going after, and I'll tell you exactly what this is about the right wing is going after trans people. So they're going after drag shows, they're going after trans kids, they're going after there are bomb threats against hospitals that are providing gender affirming care.

All kinds of craziness.

And the reason for that is this is a culture. They're also go after immigrants. So they're also you know, really, really anti immigration. They will refer to asylum seekers as illegals, those illegals illegal immigrants. No, they're asylum seekers, they're here legally, you're legally allowed to come to this country and ask for asylum.

They're undocumented, maybe, but they're not illegal. But that's a term that gets thrown out there to demonize these people, they're law breakers. They're bad they have violated the rules of our culture by their very existence in our space.

Just horrible.

I don't mean to get political I don't. But that aspect that inhuman when, when we dehumanize people like that, it is it is.

It invites a lot of violence, it invites a lot of human rights problems.

And people who are okay with that, who don't care or people who are in power, people who are viewing

people who are have less power than them as targets of their

anger over what's going on. When these people aren't called really causing them any problems.

99.999% of the time, these people are not causing the problems that they are being perceived. But you have the wealthy elite who are taking more than their fair share, who don't pay taxes who

you know, really shape what's going on in this kind

entry through, you know, anonymous donations to these PACs and through, you know, these money laundering deals and all kinds of craziness that are really, really causing the economic problems in this country. But we blame it on immigrants because they can't really defend themselves

as much. They're a vulnerable population.

Anyway, so I go back to culture, so culture is invisible.

Generally speaking, we don't think about it, it's like, we're like fish swimming in the ocean, we're might not be aware of the water. It's just the medium that we live in.

And so culture is a set of shared norms, not necessarily shared by everyone, but

you know, and most people live at an intersection of cultures, right? So, you know, there isn't one culture in the United States, where I live, and I would say, that's probably true for most places in the world, there are very few mono cultures that are or have any size to them.

Now, right now, as I record this, there is

there is unrest going on in Iran, because the people there are fighting, you know, what sparked this was the death, the torture to death of a young woman, for not wearing hijab correctly according to the the quote unquote, morality police.

Apparently torturing a 22 year old girl to death is moral. But showing too much hair under your hijab is not. And so

there are riots across the country, because the people are rejecting the people that are in power there that are enforcing this, this religion, but it's very easy. For those of us who live until we see stuff like this, it's very easy for those of us who live from away to say, oh, you know, Iran is, you know, it's a Muslim country. It's, you know, it's mono, it's a mono culture. There's one culture there. No, we're seeing a culture war right now.

It's a violent culture war, but that's exactly what's going on. It involves politics. It involves norms, social norms, social norms that are laws.

So

there aren't too many monocultures. I can't think of too many, you know, tribal cultures, you know, yes, if the tribe is very insulated, but those are few and far between these days.

Recently, I watched recently, maybe a year ago, I watched a live stream of Mongolian shamans performing a ceremony to try to help with the COVID epidemic. And it's being streamed off somebody's iPhone, somebody was in, you know, this person, this Mongolian person was there with his iPhone. And, you know, they were openly streaming the ceremony, the shamans agreed to stream it all over the world. And

it was really nice, it was really, really beautiful. But that's, that's an interesting thing to me that, you know, in these, these tribal cultures that still live very close to their traditional ways, we have still the influx of modern technology, the fact that you can get a cell signal in the middle of Mongolia, you know, I'm not sure where they were, how close they were to a city or whatever.

But it looked like they were fairly remote from what I saw from the video.

So there aren't too many these days, mono cultures, there are people who keep up a lot of their cultural current sort of artifacts, right. So, you know, even within where I live, you know, there's an Italian festival and a Greek Festival. And, you know, there are people who celebrate Chinese New Year and all have these things, these cultural artifacts and events. And I love that I think, you know, we can all be richer from experiencing different cultures, experiencing and respecting different cultures.

So

that's sort of a way of saying like, I grew up in this culture that was patriarchal.

Because predominantly, Christianity has been patriarchal.

For as for its entire existence,

I'm not going to say that that Jesus or the message of Jesus was predominantly patriarchal. I don't think it was.

In fact, he spent a lot of time with women, which really kind of weird for those that day and age and

you know, what became the Christian church was really the Roman state.

And they used it as a way of exerting control over this empire that spread across Europe and Asia.

For hundreds of years, and it was spread at the point of a sword is very patriarchal.

It's why we don't have you know, in, in the Roman Catholic faith, there's no female Pope or priests or, you know, whatever, we have nuns, but

the, the Romans spread Christianity at the point of a sword, they killed or forcefully converted pagans, they tore down temples and put churches on top of them.

Very few people that converted, because they thought it was a neat idea.

You know, you might get a king somewhere who converted to Christianity, because it worked out well for them politically. But then they would force the people under them to convert as well.

So it's an interesting history. So very patriarchal.

And the patriarchy

which is

not

an aspect of the Divine patriarchy is very much a

immature, masculine, it has power over others, it is power through violence, it has power through control.

Patriarchy is a very immature

the divine masculine, which is what you know, we reach for with real masculinity. So, when you think of toxic masculinity,

we think about, you know, we think about violence and power over, you know, over those who are vulnerable, for one reason or another.

We think of rejecting, you know, progression, progression progress.

Right, we reject toxic masculinity rejects the equality of women, the equality of people of different ethnicities.

And the concept that we have of race these days is constructed, and it's constructed very recently.

And I mean, like, a few 100 years ago,

because

because of slavery, predominantly, to justify slavery, the concept of the concept that we have of race, I'm not saying races, you know, the people don't people have physical differences from depending on the region they were in, but people didn't look at,

you know,

oh, you're, you know, you have darker skin than I do, you are a lesser person. That didn't really happen until very, very recently in human history. Right. People enslaved each other, but it was mostly because they were conquered. Right? So you had the Romans would conquer the Franks, for example, or a conquer you know, Greeks or conquer, you know, the Celts, and sometimes turn the conquered people into slaves. It was not about race, it was about who was conquered. I'm not justifying slavery for any reason. I'm just saying like the the enslavement of people. That justification for that because of race is a very recent invention.

So this is all patriarchal, and not to you know, if you are, if you're listening to this, and you're Christian, I am not bashing your faith. I'm not. But if you look at the history of the Christian church, it has been used by nefarious people throughout the ages to enslave, to disempower because it has been patriarchal. Now, there are movements within different Christian faiths to become less patriarchal.

But I do see

you know, I do still see stuff

If I see stuff on Twitter, sometimes for example, by women saying, women you should submit to your husbands.

Right, you should husbands should be this is this idea that masculinity means that men are smarter than women and can make all the choices. And women should just shut up and be quiet and you know, blah, blah, blah.

Well, it's horseshit.

Sorry for my swearing, but it is it's horseshit. It's complete horseshit.

I don't care if you think it is written in the Bible, it's, you know,

yeah, these people in the Bronze Age thought that because women didn't have testosterone and generally not as much muscle mass as men that they weren't as smart. It makes no sense whatsoever.

And if you think that that does not still affect culture,

even if you aren't not identifying with that face,

then

just look at the income disparity. Right. So on average, in the United States, for example,

women are paid 85%, of what men are paid for for the same job.

That's a fact. It's a statistical fact.

Why? Why is that? Because our culture is still patriarchal. And the problem is, again, culture is invisible. So it's harder, it's hard to change.

Change is coming, the pendulum swing, is going back towards a more balanced, perhaps more matriarchal culture.

One of the problems I see

is, there is it's not a problem that there's so much emphasis on the divine feminine, that's not the problem.

The problem is that there is almost zero emphasis on the divine masculine, and the divine masculine is not about patriarchy.

It is the it is absolutely not about patriarchy. The Divine Masculine is about power, but it's about power with, it's about empowering others, it's about lifting oneself up so that you can serve so that you can help others not so you can rule over them that's not divine masculine.

That that's just crap. It's just more oppression.

And so as a pendulum swing, the past few decades, there has been a movement towards the divine feminine, but we will not bring balance to humanity without lifting both the divine feminine and the divine masculine and saying, Look,

we need both to lift humanity out of the state where we feel like we're in competition with each other constantly.

Where we feel like we have to use violence against each other

to survive.

Where we feel like we have to own more things than the other person, people to feel valuable to feel worthy.

So as you know,

I promised I'm going to talk about sex if

I'm talking about the attitudes of sex, and these are very cultural things. Right?

So, when I talk about sex here, I'm not I'm talking about you know, both biological sex and the act of sex.

And not just sexual reproduction and not just men and women, but

the act of sex as a spiritual act, physical, mental, spiritual act, which it can be.

Sex can be very spiritual when it is approached.

With the divine feminine and divine masculine in mind, in balance, and know that doesn't mean simply

how heterosexual sexuality.

It doesn't mean that two women or two men are three people or five people

I

can't experience the sacredness of sex.

It just means those factors have to be in balance.

It just means that we have to lift ourselves up, lift others up and bring everyone together,

whatever that means. There are an infinite variety of ways to do that, that extend beyond the physical act of, of sex.

And I think,

you know, I think there are,

there are little pockets there little communities who've discovered this, there are people practicing

sex as part of ritual. There's the tantric community that's discovered the sacred, sacred aspects of sex.

But, you know, we in general, we treat

we treat sex in this western culture that I am part of, just in a few ways. One, it's, it's evil, and it's dirty, because it's pleasurable, and it's sneaky. And you and, you know, just gross is bad sex is bad. George Carlin used to joke. One of the things I learned from Sunday school was that sex is the most evil thing on the planet. And you should only do it with somebody that you absolutely love and are married to.

It's an interesting dichotomy. And George Carlin had a real way. He was a real Jester. And I don't mean that in a pejorative sense. I mean, jesters were the the people because it was the only people in some cultures that could speak truth to the king by poking fun at things. So he broke through a lot of taboos by talking about things in a funny way.

And explaining how ridiculous some things were, like that attitude. So sexist, Sina that way dirty, filthy, disgusting a sin, you're going to hell, you shouldn't even have sexual thoughts. Let's forget the fact that if you do believe in a deity, He created you with sexual he or she, sorry, created you with sexual impulses, created every human being as a sexual being.

You know.

And so, there's that aspect. And then there's the aspect that, you know,

sex should only be between, you know, a man and a woman after they're married. And there's very traditional, you know, vanilla bland, and it's necessary for procreation. And that's the only reason it exists, it exists so that we can,

that we can make babies.

And, um, you know,

that's a that's a viewpoint, and it is one of, you know,

it's one of the things that holds people back from really experiencing the fullness of who they are.

You know, if sex is only for procreation, why do people pass the age of sexual maturity are incapable of having children capable of having sex and having pleasure from sex and, you know, all of those things?

Right. And the procreation view also says that there are all kinds of any anything other than heterosexual

you know,

quote, unquote, normal regular sex that could result in a pregnancy is is that evil and wrong.

So it negates a whole range of things that human beings could experience and get a heightened sense of spirituality and connection and healing from

people who practice Tantra know the healing power of sexual energy.

It's extremely powerful. Why would we be made with that capacity to be told that it's sinful to use it despite the fact that it's harming no one?

Right. And yes, there are sexual activities that harm people don't get me wrong things, any sort of non consensual activity. So sex with minors, for example, if you're an adult,

any sort of non consensual, you know, from assault, you know, to more extreme sexual violence.

These are, you know, yeah, that's not right. That's ethically not right.

Let's draw the line between ethics and morals.

Ethics is, you know, I weigh the harm of my activities, the actual harm and morality is, well, that's bad because my priest told me that's bad.

That's bad because

you know, scribed, that was wrong.

So I don't give a lot of weight to morality, that things are wrong in their for their own sake, because I think it takes people can be very moral and completely unethical.

Right.

People can meet Well, this is, you know, people, people justified slavery using the Bible in the United States. Before that, you know, leading up to the Civil War.

They believe they were moral, that was the right thing to do.

One of the most unethical eras in human history

when one of the most unethical acts in human history, owning other human beings, treating them like cattle treating their lives as worthless,

treating them as less than human. Well, they could find a Bible passage that justified that for sure.

So there are those those views of sex sex is bad and evil. Sex is a necessary evil for procreation.

And then, you know, there there are people who are becoming,

you know, there were lots of movements in the 60s and 70s, towards free love and, you know, just open sexuality and all of these things. And that's okay, to an extent as long as I'm not judging anybody's sexual preferences or activities or whatever.

The but the ethics of it, you have to think of the ethics of it.

And am I taking advantage of other people? Am I you know, entering into a relationship as an equal, even. So, even of people who are into BDSM, for example, I'm not an expert. It's not my scene. I'm not shaming anybody who does.

But there you know, there is a relationship, even though it might seem like somebody's dominant, somebody's submissive, somebody's you know, there is some level of pain infliction, going on whatever, but it's always done through agreement.

Right, it's always done through some level of equality and it should or should be, and people can stop it if it goes too far, and that that sort of thing. So

as a as a shamanic practitioner, as somebody who practices shamanism, I can tell you that and this is an attitude not taken by very many other than people, you know, really people practicing Tantra that sexuality can be very sacred.

It can be passionate, it can be enjoyable, it can relieve your stress, it can do all of those things that sex does, and it can also be a sacred act.

Why? Because you become you realize your interconnection with other people, you realize your interconnection with the world. That's part of it. The other part of it is sexual activity generates a tremendous amount of spiritual energy, tremendous amount of etheric energy that can be used and there's sex magic practitioners who use this to take advantage of this.

It can be used for good it can be used for healing.

It can be used to heal trauma,

even Yes, even sexual trauma. I'm not an expert in that I can tell you that there are tantric practitioners who who do this who use this

to help people heal through sexual trauma.

It's profound it seems to be anyway, from my perspective, profoundly effective.

Because you're using an energy that is very close to the actual wound to heal the wound your wound becomes the medicine

anyway, to go down that path.

So

the shamanic view

Have sex I cannot tell you because shamanism is not a religion. And shamanism is always practiced in context with culture.

But when I look at things, when I say look at things, shamanic Lee, I explore them from a spiritual perspective, I explore them either in Germany or working with helping spirits or what have you.

And, um, you know, try to look at them a little bit objectively

with an objective flavor. I don't ever say that my viewpoint is objective. I know it's subjective, but I try to look at things, I try to

explore them and detach from my previous, you know, my previous beliefs my previous you know, I explored them with, okay, what, what is actually going on here? What is the possibility here?

What's the probability? What's this? What's that?

So, you know, lots of lots of shamanic practitioners out there. And they will have different viewpoints about sexuality and sex, and they will be shaped by their culture. And it's important to understand that

I am not saying that my views on sex are not shaped by my culture.

But I'm aware that they are and I think, I think a lot of people are not aware that your whatever your opinions are about sex are shaped strongly by culture.

I know it you know, but I know lots of people in different communities.

You know, I know people I have great friends who are polyamorous, I've had great conversations with them about that.

And I'm able to do that because I don't sit in judgment. And that is a practice that comes from working with clients as a shamanic practitioner.

You know, I have

I don't, I try not to give away information, identifiable information about my clients, but I have a client who is who's trans, a trans man. And he told me, and this, this, gosh, this made my heart melt.

He told me

that he likes working with me, because I'm the first person who made him feel okay, being himself

being who he was,

what a gift that was, to me, what a gift he gave me to tell me that I can't even tell you how much that means to me.

And it's, it's something that I work on. Because I know that I'm a human being. And I've been shaped by my culture, to hold certain judgments about people.

And when I meet with a client, or when I sit with my friends who come from all walks of life and have different, you know, cultural backgrounds and different beliefs, and some of them are counterculture people, you know, they really want to fight their culture, they grew up and

I tried to sit with them in non judgement, I do my best I make an effort. And that's all we can do as human beings.

So I have friends of good friends who are polyamorous and I didn't know how that worked.

I mean, you know, I know, I know what polyamory is.

But I don't live in that world. I haven't lived in that world. And so I

you know, I'm like, tell me how this works. How does it worked between you two? You know, it was a couple that I know. And they're polyamorous couple.

And because I was open and earnestly asking, and they knew that I would not judge them for their choices.

What worked for them, what worked out for them, they have a, they have one of the longest marriages of any of my friends that have and seems to be very healthy, and they have a great family. They're wonderful kids and, you know, whatever.

You know, and I know, some people would make that there. They must be devil worshipers. They must be you know, in league with Satan. They're, you know, cheating on there. No,

no, they're wonderful people. This is an aspect of themselves is one aspect of themselves.

But it's a choice they have both willingly made and one of the things that really struck me

about this is

Hey, how's it worked between you two? And, you know, they're like, Well, you know, the rule is that we lay our cards on the table, we tell the truth about everything. There's no sneaking around, there's no nothing. And if anybody's not okay with what's going on, we have a conversation about it, you know, and if, if, you know, one of us isn't really not okay with what the other one was doing, the other one would probably stop, you know, but it's never really come up.

And said, Well, that's a really admirable quality in a relationship. Even if it's not polyamorous just this complete honesty, just lay your cards out on the table. How many of us can say that about any of our relationships, even our friends are

that you can just say

anything, without fear of being judged by the other person.

We are, like, you know, even if you are an intensely religious person with this code of morals handed to you from the Word of God,

you're still a human being, and you're not supposed to be in judgment.

I don't know of a

religious doctrine that says human beings are supposed to judge each other.

Particularly not Christianity, there's all kinds of stuff that says you're not

judgments up to God, if that's your belief system,

but we do, we're human beings and human beings naturally judge, but we can work on it.

So yeah, I've, you know, I'm friends

with all kinds of,

you know, different forms of relationships. And, you know, I certainly have gay friends and straight friends and trans friends and

friends who are Swingers, I'm not sure if they use that term still or not, I think they do.

You know, and I do my best.

Because one of the things is that we can learn from these people, right? So an example is my,

my, the couple that I'm friends with that are polyamorous.

And, you know, when I'm talking to them, and they say, the only way this works is if we're 100% honest with each other, and there are no secrets. And it rocked me back and I was like, wow.

That's a beautiful thing.

Even if polyamory isn't for me, that aspect of it sounds really attractive.

What if my partner could come to me and say, just be completely honest. Just say, hey, about anything, it doesn't have to be sex. Hey, I really like XY or Z.

And I don't, I don't like XY or Z. But doesn't matter because they're I understand and respect to their human being with different needs and once and whatever.

What if I could

do that?

That I try, I do my best. We're still human, and we have to sort of forgive ourselves.

So exploring sex from a shamanic perspective. So in shamanism, if you don't know the main practice of shamanism is called journeying. It's going into an altered state, and working with helping spirits traveling and other dimensions are the realities. We do that mainly for healing and information. So I have explored

I have explored sexual energy from a shamanic perspective and there is there are practices in shamanism, where you're working with spirits or you're working with a person or whatever, that are incredibly intimate.

They're non physical, so I don't necessarily describe them as sex. But there are spiritual practices that are incredibly intimate, and the rewarding their incredibly rewarding experiences.

So sex can be the same way if you incorporate spirituality, if you incorporate mind, body and spirit into

sexual practice.

It can be a very, very sexy a very, very spiritual experience can be healing experience. It can be all of these things.

Sexual activity can be and I don't

You know

it doesn't have to be with another person it can be masturbation to be quite frank you can you can masturbation can be very healing can be a very, very healing practice. Again these are things that I have explored through through journey work through spiritual work through inquiring with helping spirits

but I still, you know, I still encounter shamanic practitioners that grew up in, in this culture that have sort of puritanical ideas about sex and sexuality. But shamanism is inherently matriarchal in the fact that it is not, there isn't a patriarchy, there isn't a pyramid where you have like, a dude on top and some dudes below him and some dudes below them and some dudes below them, and then women and others on the bottom, it's not like that. It's not this big pyramid. Without you know, it's, it's flat, we approach spirit and we approach our clients as equals.

Yeah, shamans in shamanic cultures are very respected members of the community respect, one definition of respect is intelligent evaluation of power.

So shamans have not power over again, that is a very immature, masculine.

But you go to a shaman with respect with gifts in some cultures with whatever, because they have a power to to help you.

They're interested in your health, they're interested in your physical health, your mental health, your spiritual health.

They are a they're a servant, not a servant, that you order around. Again, that's a very immature view of that word, servant. They gain a lot of power so that they can serve their communities so they can play an important role.

Now, in Western culture,

we often forget who the servants are.

We call our politicians, leaders. And they might be leaders. But they should leave lead through service. But they don't, in most places, some places Yeah, I don't see that happening a lot. I don't see people taking on they'll, they'll use words, they'll say, Oh, I'm here for the people of my state. I'm here to serve the people of my state. And then they're just out there getting money and cow telling special interest and whatever. There are a few that are not like that, there are a few that view their role as servant and take that. Importantly,

I view my role as a shamanic practitioner, and teacher as servant, meaning not meaning I accept disrespect and ordering around from people, but I am here to serve. I'm here to make the world a better place.

So I do this podcast and I have a YouTube channel and I have other social media stuff. And despite the fact that you know, I have to earn money to live and there are services that I provide to do that. I do put out a lot of things, I spent a tremendous amount of effort putting doing things like this that are free.

And even when I'm paid, you know, my viewpoint is I'm serving, you know, I'm serving that person,

I am there to help.

And they do my best. I do everything that I can do.

So

I will leave you with this. I always try to leave people, you know, I was trying to leave some practical thing with people or whatever.

You know, think about your own attitudes towards sex and sexuality and sexual and gender identity and all of those things, all of that is kind of rolled up, can be rolled up that can be very confusing how they connect and all those things. Think about that and think about where they came from.

They came from your parents and your parents, parents and your parents, parents, parents, and etc, etc, etc. And who came up with those rules that you think are the norm? What is the norm to you?

And why? I'm not saying you have to change who you are or change what you do.

Unless you think exploring that is going to serve you better

just examine where your ideas and beliefs came from.

Detach as much as possible in thinking that any sort of dogma or doctrine is, you know, the word of God. Even if you believe it's the word of God, it is people who told you about the word of God.

Unless you are channeling divinity directly

you're reading it from a book or you are reading somebody else's interpretation from a book or you are hearing somebody else's interpretation for a book or things are enforced upon you.

Examine where these things come from. It may open up your world, but at least you can perhaps understand how people can have different viewpoints and be open and non judgmental with them.

So anyway, I hope this has been hope this has been good hope is maybe have been a little eye opening for you.

You know, I'll talk more about this in the future. It's a topic that I you know, I like talking about sex. Sex is great. And I think it's under utilized as a spiritual tool for a lot of people. For most people, the vast majority of people

and anytime we can, you know, it is there's almost no greater tool for mind-body and spirit alignment.

So, you know, think about that. And I will, I will talk to you real soon.

You have been listening to speaking spirit with your host, John more. For more info or to contact John go to maineshaman.com That's MAINESHAMAN.com.