S1:E13 - Superiority in Spiritual Workers

Ever wonder why some spiritual workers use formation and degrees as a weapon? In this episode, I'm pulling back the curtain on the gatekeepers who try to put a license on the soul, and looking at how performative reverence is often just a mask for a total lack of integrity. 

Your path doesn’t belong to a gatekeeper, and your magic definitely doesn’t need their permit. This is about coming back to the hearth and trusting the wisdom you’ve forged in the trenches, far away from their ivory towers. Whether you’re a Granny Woman or a Listening Woman, your authority is built on truth and survival, not a certificate.

#spirituality #spiritualdirection #healing #momsstrangemagic

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Ram Doss says that you have to be very honest about your spiritual predicaments. He says you can be phony, but phony holy isn't going to get you any it is not going to get you anywhere. In other words, that means that you need to show up as you are. And that's how I do it for Mom Strange Magic. Hi, I'm Kim, the voice and face behind Mom Strange Magic. I'm also the storyteller, storyteller over at the Kimbo Burley Tales. And today I would like to talk about what I think is what I see is superiority of spiritual workers. This for me is where you get a person that is paid their$70,000 and works to really form an elite hierarchy of the work that they do that is only available to other people that work in an elite hierarchy, forgetting that the work that they do as a spiritual director or as a spiritual worker comes from the basis of those men and women who worked within their communities, known as for the females as granny women, or the wise people, that kept the traditions of that culture going and allowed everyone to come and see them, no matter what their status or resources were. And somewhere along the line of human history, that work got turned into it was commodified and gentrified. I talk about that in one of my past podcasts with uh kind of a nod to the Flexner Report, where we see in 1910 in the United States sort of this shift from community-based wellness to those are not the people that you need to trust because you know they're poor or they're a woman or they're um African American or indigenous, but they definitely are a minority and they don't have the credentialing or the research that we have in our biomedical models to take over health care. The story behind that is that uh the pharmaceutical businesses were becoming profitable, and if you can take community wellness out of the community and put it into a system, then that system gets money. Now, just so you know, this is not uh any kind of thing where I'm rallying against the US healthcare system or any other country's healthcare system. Um, I've just seen a real kind of negative side eye to community-based medicine, whether that be with a free clinic or whether it be like herbalist without borders or even spiritual directors or people that do intuitive counseling. So this spir this superiority that I see isn't just in the more kind of new age or eclectic and esoteric paths. I see this a lot in those that have obtained many, many degrees in something like biblical studies or um any other faith system. You see it a lot in those that have really worked hard to get all of that education, and then now that they have that education, they want to, you know, move it forward. And I shouldn't really say a lot. I just I've seen it where people in a certain demographic have the resources to go get this higher education. Once they've achieved that higher education, they now use that higher education to sort of shun or discriminate against people that have come to be where they are from lived experience. This happens with uh tarot readers, right? So there are people that have studied the essence of tarot back to, you know, I guess first humans, and if you do not interpret tarot the way that they do, then they get really upset, and you know, you're going against the grain, and you you know, whatever. And honestly, I think that if we were to go back to the time that any kind of oracles were used, uh, there's a actually a great class on Harvard about this. Um, if you want to take a free class and learn more about oracles and prediction and things of that nature, I would highly suggest it. It's a great class. Um and and to to know that, you know, like before tarot, there were augers and there were, you know, so people have been trying to get information from the universe using their own inner gifts or with tools, probably longer than we even have any kind of historical documentation for, or we have any kind of archaeology, you know. So there's there's always gonna be some kind of new learning that we're gonna get on this. So that's something that if you want to research it, I would suggest checking out the uh that class from Harvard. There's cats, there's always cats. I swear there's cats. Um, so in this work, the spiritual work, sometimes those that have the ability to get more education go into my chair is making noise, go into what I kind of call the ivory tower. And they get into the ivory tower, and now that they have worked so hard and acquired all of that information, they are going that was you know not accessible, they're going to now you know keep keep going with that. I got distracted by a cat that happens, and we from there you kind of it becomes an elite system, and so if you know you're in the system, you have to proliferate those things, so you there's a certain persona that you have to adapt. That this is some side, you know, it is it is a traditional way of doing things when most of the people that I have found doing this work on a more feet on the ground kind of way, is that you learned it from someone. Uh, I would like to, you know, my expert witness here that cannot cannot participate, but I am more along the lines of say, like Biddy Early from uh Ireland. Look her up, she's great. So she got her knowledge from a blue bottle. That was, and people would go to her, and you know, it talks about oftentimes she was not paid, and you know, she just kind of did that work. She offered counseling and healing and whatever, so biddy early rock on. And people like her existed in all communities around the world, and they still exist. Most of them just don't get on social media, and most of them are word of mouth. Sort of how my work was for a while during those 10 years of being up and down and up and down. But you get to a point, I think, where you get so up there that you create this kind of institutional narcissism where it creates a barrier that you want to protect, they want to protect their status and wealth. And that is I can completely understand it, but it it excludes those that have lived experience, it diminishes people that have worked hard with the resources that they have to provide the skills and services to others in a way that is both welcoming to all people and allows people to show up as they are. Um, so you you know, and you just kind of a tarot reader that didn't take 92 hours of classes 10 years, I don't whatever. Just because someone is does not understand the Golden Dawn translation of tarot does not mean that they are a bad tarot reader. The same is for people that have intuitive gifts. You don't have there's everyone is intuitive. I I like the way uh Sonia Choquette says this. I read about this in the 90s where she says uh everyone can play basketball, but not everyone can play basketball like Michael Jordan, but that we can all work to try to get to that level of expertise. And that is absolutely true. Everything on this planet has sentience, everything on this planet has energy and it has light, making it so that we are absolutely connected, and we are connected to the ivory tower as much as we are connected to the dirt preacher and everything in between. So higher learning does not mean that you know more, it just means that you or that you're more that you're better, right? That you have some kind of superior knowing. It just means that your path is different. And so, how do we honor the lineage of those people that the the greeny women and the wise woman kind of energy, right? Well, just like that. Don't it's I mean, this is the the listening, a listening woman is not a brand, and it's not a title, it is a spiritual role that you get when you work with somebody, and they teach you how to do deep presence, and they talk about ancestral resilience. They a listening woman is beyond any kind of spiritual direction, and it is honestly not something, again, that I'm going to flaunt around because that rolls into the work that I do as a spiritual director or when I do intuitive counseling. And really, what happens is you get this kind of corporate spiritual complex, and instead of going to the hearth or showing up on somebody's house, you know, like long ago, one of the when I was first learning tarot, when I was a wee baby reader back in when I was in college in Baling Green, my first reading was at an actual like mystic fair, which was great. My second reading, I showed up at this woman's house, uh, and it was just amazing. You know, she was like, Do you want tea or whatever? And I was like, I'm gonna be like that. And then I had an opportunity to learn with other teachers. And being in a university setting, I got to learn from professors that had all this knowledge and experience and travels, but who also came back into their community to work as healers and wise people. It was amazing. I was able to learn yoga before it was cool. I learned about massage before, you know, it was I like I had the ability to learn these things. And this was in, you know, back in '93. So we're looking at like 33 years of taking those first experiences professionally, right, and academically, and bringing them into now. And not even, you know, let's not even talk about what my life was as a young child or into being a young adult in high school, that I've always been of this mind. I've always wanted to learn these things. And so my degree or whatever, or my, you know, my whatever is lived experience. But also, I have taken the classes, I've studied with the mentors. I have wrestled for a long time about the legitimacy of my work because somehow I cannot get accepted into the halls of academia. Um, and this this the corporate spiritual complex, it's just it's it's less about formation and more about who is the the most right. And I I am absolutely willing to tell people that I make mistakes and I show up as I am online, and I do not try to present myself as some kind of guru lao. I am a down-to-earth person that struggles with things just like everyone else. But when I put on that mantle of, you know, spiritual direction or intuitive counseling, that it is not about me. It I am a conduit and learn that in Reiki, that you are not Reiki, you are a conduit for Reiki. And I think that what I you know, that if you're going to do this, create a digital hearth where everyone has a seat. If you have a bigger, you know, if you have more than you need, build a bigger table where everyone has a seat, regardless of whatever. You know, it's just like it, it's it's it's wild to me. And it's like performative spirituality, it is it avoids the heavy lifting of actual healing. It is a lot of, you know, the Cleopatra syndrome, where it's easier for people to pay for a starseed fantasy than to sit in the quiet of their own shadow and do the internal work. And the, you know, using this language of holy and I'm the best, and you but you bypass this the insecurities or the fact that of these people that are they're coming to you because first they need help. First and foremost, they need help, and they want you to, they want you to sit with them while they talk about the things that they need help with. Um, they want you to give them what I call the biology of truth, they want a middle way where you can say, hey, this is epigenetics and the nervous system, and it meets the the spiritual world. And the real healing isn't pretty and it's messy and it's biological and it's spiritual. So when you want when people show up, you don't want to immediately be like, Well, I am the best that there is to be because I I am superior to you, and clearly I know more than you, so let me tell you why I know more than you. And that is just not what it is, it's just it's not. And so how do we get this way? How do we get it when we you start seeing, you know, like the the way makers or the you know, the latest thing is, you know, I'm I'm evolving or I'm somehow uh on the platform that's going to get me elevated above all of you all. Like what they the you that is the no one's gonna connect with that. It is an uncopyable thing. You cannot ever do that. No one is there's you know, I I I I have to go back to the tradition in which I was raised, and uh the in, you know, the way that I came to this work as a kid was being raised in the Catholic Church. And I can completely remember, you know, I had uh I had my family, had some friends, uh, they were brothers, they were Catholic priests, they gave me way more spiritual formation than than I probably even wanted, but I that I I got and it was fantastic. So there is a the whole like remembering the of asking questions about things, you know, like well, well, how did the where's the land of nod and how's this and whatever? And I remember saying something about well, you know, I don't my exact words I cannot remember, you know, that's a it was probably having to do with why did people make fun of me because we were real poor. And um one of the priests said um, well, I remember that Jesus said something about if you how you treat the least of people speaks more about that person than it does about the person being mistreated. And you know, that is that is some deep sacred truth right there, and it's amazing that a lot of the spiritual workers that I have a lot, that's just not right. Some of the spiritual workers that I have met in my path to, you know, whatever, have had this like, well, you can't possibly know anything about yourself because you are not like me. And I'm like, you know what? This this is this is not what that and that hurts people, that hurts people. You can't you you the I I just don't I I I'm I'm sort of blown away at how this is, and when you know, people want to say that they know more than you and that they know you better than you know yourself. And you know what? In psychological first aid training and in training for trauma-informed care, you learn the would like the things that you're supposed to do with these people when you're sitting with them and helping them, is that you never say that you know what their problem is, you also don't say, How does that make you feel? And you also don't say, I think you know the answer, don't you? You keep your mouth shut and you listen, and then when they're done, you you say, you know, thank you for sharing me with sharing that with me. Um, let's unpack this together, or let me hold that for you. And you know, I'm here with you while you walk through this, and it's just you know, you you have to observe yourself as a spiritual worker at the same time you are in session with somebody, and you when you are sitting there, you realize that you do not you are not the authority of this person. Um, it is just you know, and so I see this happening more often than I would like, and it it is difficult for me because again, coming back to this work, I am trying to find my space in all of this, and I I keep getting tossed out of the places that I thought I would fit into showing up and saying, Hey, I've done this work, I've done this genealogy, I've done epigenetics, I've done forensic genealogy, I've done genetic genealogy, I've here's this, here's the credentials, here's the people that I've worked with, um, here's the classes that I've taught in my community. And they're like, Well, but you didn't do this, and you didn't do that, and you know, you better check yourself before you wreck yourself. And I'm like, I'm sorry, friends, that is never going to be me. I'm going to be sitting on my back porch with a cup of tea and something to eat, letting people show up as they are, because that's who I am. And this makes me kind of think of my dad. My dad was a complex man, and I am doing a little bit more forensic genealogy and trying to discern some things, which by the way, spiritual direction is about discernment. Again, you cannot diagnose nor can you prescribe, but you discern, you hold space. And I have to think of my dad, who I have been talking to more and more and more, and talking to him a lot this week, especially in a ton on on Monday. I don't know why, I just was like, Dad, I really I want you, I need some help, I need some assistance. Uh, you faced challenges in your life, you did things that were sort of out of the ordinary, and I'm learning things from my investigation where he I he was deeply spiritual. He was also very Mormon, and so he had to kind of make peace with these parts of himself, and he was an attorney, so he had this like triad of things that were his career and his his own beliefs and his religious path, and the conversations that he and I would have in person probably would not be well received from parts of his family, but for me, they were so validating. He would say things to me that I I could I could understand, and I'm like, well, now this is where I get it from. But at the same time, I know that you know, it's a little bit on my mom's side. But anyway, this week I just was like, Dad, can you just give me can can you help me out here? And I remember something about him that he was very much in tune with things beyond understanding. And while I believe that his faith provided him a good groundwork, he was a deep thinker and he moved past that sort of concrete structure of his faith to seek deeper answers. And you know, in a book that is now destroyed due to weather that came through Kentucky with Helene. Um there's this whole like book of channeled information with my great-great-grandfather and and just all these things that I grew up with, you know, my mom and her husband at the time, not my dad, not my bio-dad, um, you know, being told that those kind of things were not good and you know, that weren't scientific, and then talking to these priests, and they're like, oh yeah, there's you know, the mystics and there's the prophets, and look in the Old Testament, and growing up in that place, and and then learning from the community about the women who would rub a potato on a wart and stick it, uh uh dig it near in the ground near an oak tree under a full moon, or about you know, someone would be sick, and these women would say, I'll buy your sickness from you, and they would pay the person a dollar, and just understanding the the human nature and the brain and and just all of it. And what I see now in this spiritual work and the superiority is that the you know, these community workers ran so you all could walk, they they ran so I could walk. These, you know, they faced persecution and their loss of life and their loss of family and resources because they were just compelled by forces unknown to show up as they are, and that's what I do with Mom's Strange Magic. I try to show up as I am and not get out here and be some holier than thou person based on something that doesn't even matter at in the end, anyway. It doesn't matter when you go when when it your time comes and you go to the the doors of judgment, no one's gonna ask you if you had more education than someone else, no one's gonna ask you if you were superior, they're gonna you're gonna be asked how you were treated other, how you treated others, and how you worked to make the world a better place, and how you worked to make yourself a better person in the connection of making the world a better place. So in all of that for this week's podcast, wherever you are in your path is wherever you are, and where if you feel that working with a person is right for you, then work with that person. But if you feel if you are being shamed or bypassed or any other manner of thing to give your power away to these people that are, you know, I'm sure they're doing a great job, but just because they have a better website or more produced videos or more viral on the internet or whatever, doesn't necessarily mean they're gonna be right for you. Remember the hills and the haulers, remember the poor and the marginalized, remember the people that can't get that kind of care because they don't have the resources to do that. Also, remember in many traditions, and we know this, that the worker that you asked to come in, they were the family would feed them and and keep them and help make the you know their time in doing that work as comfortable as possible. It wasn't about charging the most money or having the highest amount of degrees, it was about being real and showing up as you are. So as you go through this, just know that all spiritual workers are equal, none are better, and we are all just trying to do our best with the gifts that we have to help others in their time of need. Not every person is going to have all the things that you want, and a good practitioner will refer you out if there's something that they can't do for you. And so, yeah, so as I say, if you just need to show up as you are and have somebody listen to you, please, you know, reach out to me. We'll make it work. You can go to my website at momstrangemagic.com and there's some information. You can follow my YouTube, which you can see on my website, and uh hopefully you will find comfort and ease when you are viewing these or reading or what have you. So thank you for joining me. I just want you to know that I see you out there shining brightly as the sun, and that you are beautiful and magical and special. Until next week, know that you are loved, and I will see you, or you will hear me soon. Anyway, goodbye, have a great week.