Exploring The Power of Spiritual Healing

Announcer 0:28

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

John Moore 0:47

Hello, everybody.

as I record this, it is early morning, mid February is that I'm recording this on February 13. It's the day before Valentine's Day, the feast day of St. Valentine, a martyr, who was killed in I think around two to the 260s ad

ton of studies of meditation: 1000

it's very difficult to fold, you know, he, we can't have a full set, you know that we also wouldn't be useful full scale map. So we delete a lot of information. And it's distorted. And, you know, most maps you're going to look at are going to be 2d, right. And so 3d maps to get around. So I'm going to present a model of human beings, which is going to be useful for studying the nature of spiritual healing. But is going to delete a whole lot of information, it's going to distort information, and it's going to be presented through the lens that I view it through. So other people will have other models, they will use other terminology. And you just have to evaluate whether this is a useful model for you. This model is useful for me to teach the stuff he's about to think, really hard about how to present this information. So the model that I'm going to use sort of blends from the way things are described in some spiritual practices, in that human beings have many, many bodies. We have a physical body, right? We have an energy or a theoretic body. I'll describe some of these things in a little more detail. Second, we have an astral body, we have a mental body, we have a causal body. And we have a spiritual body. And the differences between these bodies are like the differences between our organs, I have a heart, I have lungs, they do different things. But they are necessary, they have to work together. I could not live without either a heart or lungs. If I didn't have a heart, my lungs wouldn't work. If I didn't have lungs, my heart wouldn't work, things work together. But there are also some differences between them that are subtle. Now the main difference between the main difference not the only difference, but the main difference between the bodies that humans have. And not just humans, but all living things. But I'm going to focus on humans at this point. The main difference, or the level of subtlety. And we go from what's called gross to subtle bodies. Now the grossest body at least the grossest body we can perceive, not gross, like disgusting, but gross, like heavy, more material. Right, has mass has weight has, you know, takes up space. The most grossest the physical body. Right, we have a physical body, you have a physical body, you are not a physical body, you have a physical body. Your physical body has a size and a weight and takes up space and you know, exists in location. And it's challenging. To change the shape of the physical body, as anyone who works out knows, you can change it a little bit, but you can't grow a third arm out of your back or suddenly turn into a bear shape shift into a bear, Although who knows, maybe some people can at a certain level of spiritual development. But because this physical body is sort of locked in, it's hard to change its shape. Now one body kind of removed from the physical body is the energy or etheric body. And just like the physical body, this body kind of takes up space, it's less gross, it can't really weigh it. You know, solid objects can pass through it. But it has it has organs and energy channels and things. And this is the level of, we could call it a spiritual body. It's an energy body otherwise known as the etheric body. And this is the level at which things like acupuncture and Reiki and other kinds of energy healing work. And this, this layer of what it is, this body is very close to the physical body, right in subtlety grossness and it can't really leave the physical body, and they rely on each other like the the lungs and the heart rely on each other. If you're if you were, if your energy body were somehow completely removed from you, you would you would die. Because it's so it's intertwined with your physical processes. And your physical body strongly affects your energy body, your energy body strongly affects your physical body, we can affect the energy body, through movement, which is what you know, tai chi, chi Kong, any sort of, you know, movement can affect the energy body significantly. And then the energy body can also affect movement. So, when some people go through, like what we call kundalini awakening, or they have energy passing through their system, they get what are called Korea's, which are sometimes shaking in the body, a part of the body or the whole body might start shaking. This happened to me. Years ago, I didn't know what was going on. And, you know, I was meditating every night and doing some very deep meditations, and my body would start involuntarily shaking, like what is going on? Am I having, you know, some sort of seizure? Or what is it No, it's it's it's feedback, it's you know, energy from your energy body pumping into your physical body and affecting the nerves which can certainly happen. And we can do vice versa, we can affect the the nerves and the muscles, and that in effect to the energy body, now, there's different layers to the energy body. There's a layer that is very, very close to the physical body and follows the physical body, like if you've ever sort of seen auras, and you see this layer of energy that's you know, an inch or two outside the body and generally in the shape of the human body, this Some people refer to this as the etheric double. And then out beyond that, is sort of this a amorphous blob of energy roughly, egg shaped, changes, shape changes, size changes color, less tied to the physical body more subtle than the etheric body. And this, you know, some people refer to as aura, but it's part of your energy, body or bodies, we could, you know, in a different model looking through different ones, we could separate those out. We could create all these different layers to the or I know there are systems that do that. Another layer that is more subtle, and this is a layer that shamanic healing, does significant work on is what's called the astral body or the soul body. Now, this body is essentially formless. So it's kind of challenging to think of a formless body. But you know, you can think of it as you know, sort of formless energy that can take different shapes and is shaped by the consciousness it's shaped strongly by the emotions, it's shaped by thought. So we know that this body interfaces with the mind interfaces really strongly with emotions. And you can split off in you know, it's strongly linked to consciousness, and so you can split off part of this body and traveling this is what astral projection and shamanic journey Learning and some spiritual by location right when high level saints and Yogi's and things appear to be in more than one location at a time. It's usually their astral body but there's so much so much ability or power in their astral body that it actually people perceive it to be physical. And this astral body can be can be wounded, it can be fragmented parts of it can get lost. This is where a lot of shamanic healing takes place.

This is where we do ceremony called Soul Retrieval. Where we're getting parts of this fractured soul. And this happens primarily but not completely, primarily due to trauma, we all have traumas, some minor, some major, anything that scares us, that frightens us significantly, that causes us to fear for our safety, or existence is trauma. And can cause we call soul loss parts of ourselves get fragmented and if you have soul loss, most of us have some degree of soul loss, some people have significant soul loss. You get things happening, you know, usually a lot of the symptoms of soul loss appear first. In consciousness in you know, with emotional things, we see anxiety, depression, we see PTSD, we see tremendous amount of dissociation. Many of my clients report a strong sense of disconnection, disconnection from the self disconnection from the world. But soul loss because all of these bodies affect each other, can also cause physical problems. Right. And so sometimes soul retrieval, you know, people with chronic illness can get some relief. Now, let me say up front, that if you have any sort of illness do not simply rely on spiritual healing, we want to, we want to work with all the bodies as well as we can, right. So if you have, if you break your arm, go to the doctor, get the bone set, get a cast on and then Then afterwards, if you are interested in spiritual healing, go to a spiritual healer which will create the conditions spiritual conditions under which you might heal more readily. Now, I think I, you know, I make the statement that all healing is self healing. Now, that sounds weird, maybe because people come to me for healing services or people go to the doctor or whatever. What happens the way that I describe shamanic healing and the way that I even describe physical healing is I'm working to create the conditions under which you heal. So you have soul loss, you know, that is a cause it's not the condition. I work with helping spirits to repair the soul loss, so that you can incorporate, you can, you know, you can sort of bring that soul essence back into your normal, everyday reality, and you can heal from whatever it is that you've got going on. Your depression can get better over time, but you're healing you are doing the healing. If you break your arm, and the doctor sets the bone and puts a cast on, the doctor hasn't healed your bone. Right, the healing your bone heals itself, but the doctor is creating the condition for your bone to heal properly. Right. If you have an infection, that's causing all kinds of problems, you know, the they're going to give you medication, perhaps antibiotics or antivirals or something that are going to create conditions that will help your body heal itself. Right and might kill off bacteria or no virus or whatever. And after that happens, your body's immune system can go back to normal and You can achieve a state of health. So all healing, in my mind is self healing. But we get help along the way we get help from spirit, we get help from doctors, we get help from who, you know, nutrition from massage therapists, all of these things can help us in different different ways in different levels. And if you have a some kind of condition, particularly a chronic condition, you want to use as many available options, as makes sense for you to heal from that. So don't askew medicine, if it can be helpful. You know, I just want to get a meditation I just want to go to you know, and I understand some people go through yours. You know, I know a lot of people up here where I live with chronic Lyme disease. Because Lyme is really bad, it's very hard to diagnose in certain circumstances. And people go sometimes, you know, people go 510 20 years without getting a diagnosis, so they haven't been treated for it. And by that time, it's so embedded in their system, that it causes so many problems, tons and tons of problems, and even the medications that they give you. They cause, you know, I'm not an expert in line, but they cause the, the parasite that causes Lyme disease to die off in large quantities, which releases neurotoxins in your system. And that can, you know, that can kill you if it gets bad enough. So, you know, I know a lot of people in the shamanic community who started out because they were working on treating chronic Lyme. And they still go see doctors or naturopaths or whatever, but to get a handle on, some of its to build their system up. They work with shamanic healing. Now, at the most subtle level, and there are all kinds of talking going back to this body, model, multiple body like, think of those Russian nesting dolls, right? You open up one and there's another one inside, there's another one inside, there's another inside, it's a little bit like that. At our core level, at our most subtle level, is what we in my shamanic tradition called the Spirit. Some people swap the way they use soul and spirit is the spirit of the spirit body, the spirit body is completely formless. It cannot be injured, it cannot be corrupted by what happens in your life, it's unaffected by what happens in your life it is. It never needs healing. You can access it to perform healing because it has a healing effect on all of the other bodies. But it does not need healing. You don't have to heal your spirit, it is whole complete. It is also because it is completely subtle. Meaning there's no sense of mass, or size or shape or taking up space. It is outside of time and space. It's unaffected by time and space. So it is unborn and Undying. It is in essence, in any words, I used to describe it or kind of inadequate but it is an essence, your Divine Spark, the part of you that is connected to all there is to God, the universe source whatever, whatever, whatever term you want to use to describe all there is now the interesting and nice thing in shamanism is you know, we experienced that. We have a conscious experience of that. But we also have a conscious experience of that divine spark in everything. That divine spark exists in the chair, I'm sitting in the the the tree I'm looking at the cat that's, you know, causing a disturbance in my kitchen right at the moment. Now he's, he's okay, he's staring at me. Now. He hears me talking about him. He's craning his neck looking at me. You heard me say cat even though it's not his name, you know. But that same Divine Spark is in everything. It's our connection to Source. It cannot die. It cannot be wounded, injured, broken, affected at your core. to you our whole complete, infinite, undying, immortal. And, you know those words hardly describe the truth of that, but, and sort of awakening or enlightenment or whatever. Whatever, again, terms, terms or models, they're, you know, they oversimplify things they very reductionist, but awakening is about awakening to the truth of that matter. Spiritual Awakening is about awakening to the truth of who you really are. At your core.

Most of us catch glimpses of that while we practice. Some people who are considered Enlightened Masters reach a permanent state of identification with that divine spark. That's what we call enlightenment. You can get there, because we all have that we all have that capacity, even the cat. Even the cat at its core is enlightened. Even the chair that I'm sitting on at its core is enlightenment. So, we have different types of different flavors of consciousness. Right, my consciousness is different than your consciousness. Or, I'll take that back a little bit. The, the field, the capacity to be conscious consciousness itself is is the same everywhere in the universe and for everyone. But the experiences that we have that arise in consciousness are different. But the quality of consciousness, the cont the body, that is consciousness. Now, this is the body that contains everything. And there is only one, this is where non dual it non dualistic thinking, not to go too too far down this path, because this is kind of a topic for another episode of the podcast, but under underneath it all. What we describe as consciousness is a field or a body. That is everything there is. Now we might describe it as God or source or the universe. But this is another body but it is so subtle, that is completely undifferentiated.

Meaning, the field of consciousness that I am, that I when I say I this individual body, mind is experiencing is the same field of consciousness that you are experiencing in this moment. And the thing that makes us feel different is what we in spirituality called ego. The sense of individual i, and the stories that we tell about ourselves to ourselves, right? When I say I am a shamanic teacher, that's a story. The truth or falsehood of it doesn't matter. It's a story that I tell about myself. I hold it to be true.

know, and I know there's like: 1000

s of: 1000

shaking is one of the somatic treatments for trauma. But so when we, when we meeting people who practice shamanism do Soul Retrieval for people, there's an integration period. And I usually tell people, you know, plan on up to six weeks of integration work with this particular session, this particular work. Why is that? Well, again, the Soul Retrieval is isn't really the healing, the healing happens from the integrant. Like it, it is creating the conditions under which the person heals. Sometimes, this is not the norm, sometimes there's sort of this instantaneous, miraculous healing. And that's what people want. And, gosh, I understand that. Who would not want that to happen? Right. And if I could do that, for every single person in this world, I would just be hanging out in cancer, you know, pediatric cancer wards, carrying everybody with their cancer. But unfortunately, it doesn't quite work that way. And for most people, most people feel something, they feel some sense of relief. You know, sometimes dissociation can go away pretty quickly, or, you know, depression can be lifted, people can feel, you know, I had one of my first clients ever, I still remember a young gentleman who came in and he was complaining, I just feel dead inside. And I asked him, I said, Do you ever get dissociated? Oh, no. I mean, well, do you ever feel like the world isn't real? Or do you feel like you're just kind of Oh, yeah, all the time. I'm like, Okay, well, that's dissociation is like, Okay, well, I don't have any trauma. That's what you're talking about. Like, okay, well, you know, I know that not to be true, but some people have repressed their trauma so much, but not my, not my place to make somebody relive their trauma or to accept that they've had trauma or you know, whatever. But, um, after doing work on this person, this, which involved soul retrieval, he got up and he smiled, and he hadn't smiled the whole time I was with him. And he said, I feel joy inside for the first time that I can remember. Now, that's a beautiful result, that's about as good as a result as I could ever hope for. But that's to me, that's not the end of it. Right? So for now, he feels joyous inside, but how does he carry that through into the rest of his life? And so there would be an integration period, in which I would expect things to over time get better and better until there was sort of this normalized state where he would have more positive emotions, he would feel more things, he would be less disconnected from his feelings. And I've seen that happen with clients over and over and over again. So again, in my view, the nature of spiritual healing is not always that it's instantaneous and miraculous like you read in stories of miracles where people are instantly healed from being blind or are you know have some some sort of disease where they can't walk and then they can walk and you know that sort of thing those things are few and far between they do happen I fully believe that stuff happens. I've seen it happen I've had it happen in my own practice, but it's not the norm. And so I tried to set reasonable expectations with clients and you know, tell them you know, you can expect some relief today and then some overtime and you might need more than one session. It's up to you, you know, but I'm gonna make you wait a while before you have another session with me because I want this integration to happen I want you to see experience a new baseline and give your body time to heal itself. So anyway, this has been a little bit on the nature of and the power of spiritual healing. I hope that you are happy and healthy yourself and I will talk to you real soon.

Announcer: 56:31

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