The Whisper Knew: Part Two-Electric Boogaloo

The Whisper Knew: Part Two — Electric Boogaloo

Content warning: Sexual assault, manipulation, and abuse of spiritual authority.

I thought about naming this one The Shady Shamans, but I think by the time you finish reading, you’ll come up with that title on your own.

A while back, I wrote a piece called The Whisper Knew. It was about my experience with a self-proclaimed shaman who manipulated and sexually assaulted me. I chose to write that piece with a gentle heart and an underlying message about discernment. Because deep down inside, I knew something wasn’t right. The whisper was there all along. That story was about learning to listen to the whispers we all hear inside ourselves.

Well, my Gen X rebellious Jesus side has decided it’s time for a follow-up. And this one isn’t going to be quite so gentle.

If stories about sexual assault and manipulation are difficult for you to read, please take care of yourself as you decide whether to continue.

In the first piece, I chose not to identify the man who assaulted me. Why, you ask? Because I wasn’t fully standing in my power yet. I hadn’t forgiven myself. And frankly, I was concerned about being sued for telling my own fucking story.

Think about how messed up that is. Someone can experience sexual assault and then have to worry about being dragged into court and publicly shamed for speaking about it. Add to that the fact that some people practically worship these spiritual frauds, and suddenly speaking up becomes a whole other battle.

Why didn’t I press charges? Because at the time, I wanted to tell my story rather than navigate the legal system. I wanted to be heard in my own voice, not feel as though I had to convince a jury of what happened to me. I chose not to pursue criminal charges at the time. That was my decision, not his absolution. I have spent enough of my life being silent.

I have forgiven him. And eventually, I learned to forgive myself. But forgiveness doesn’t mean silence. And it sure as fuck doesn’t mean pretending something didn’t happen.

I share this story because I want people to understand how predators and manipulators can thrive in spiritual communities, especially among people who are open, vulnerable, and searching for connection. So, if you haven’t read The Whisper Knew, you might want to read Part One before continuing.

And why Electric Boogaloo? Because I love that phrase. It came from one of the greatest breakdancing movie titles ever. And I love to pop and lock.

Come on, I’m still me.

The Man Behind the Healing Circle

In Part One, I shared the events leading up to my sexual assault by a large, bald, self-proclaimed shaman who leads monthly “healing” circles and other spiritual gatherings.

Before the assault, he spent considerable time making me feel special. He flirted with me, showered me with affection, and made me feel seen and valued. Looking back, I recognize much of that attention as love bombing.

And here’s the thing. My intuition was speaking to me. When he first offered me an energy massage, he placed his hand on my chest and told me he gave wonderful healing energy massages. Before the massage, I actually told him I sensed he had another intention. He immediately reassured me that we didn’t have to do anything I didn’t want to do.

And I believed him.

About ten minutes into the massage, he began touching me sexually and initiated oral contact without my consent. I froze. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t find my voice. It felt as though he had sucked the voice right out of me.

I had agreed to an energy massage, not sexual contact. I had even voiced my concerns beforehand, and he had reassured me that my boundaries would be respected. And then he violated them.

Afterward, I was confused, hurt, and struggling to understand what had happened. And here’s the really fucked-up part. I was worried about disturbing the energy of the community I had come to love.

Imagine that. I had been sexually violated, and I was worried about disrupting the fucking group. That is how powerful belonging can be.

I continued attending his healing circles and events after the assault. Some people might wonder why. Well, I was confused. I was lonely. And as fucked up as it sounds, those gatherings were my only real outlet for practicing the healing work I was discovering within myself. I had found a community where I thought I belonged. I had people to connect with, people to practice with, and something that gave my life meaning. I didn’t want to lose all of that.

So I kept showing up. But I wore a mask. Not to pretend I was someone I wasn’t, but to hide the shame, confusion, and hurt I was carrying inside.

On the outside, I was helping others, connecting with people, and doing the healing work I genuinely loved. On the inside, I was struggling with something I couldn’t bring myself to talk about. I was surrounded by people who spoke about healing, yet nobody knew how much I was hurting.

And here’s what I want to make very fucking clear. I wasn’t pretending to be a healer. I was pretending I was okay.

The love and compassion I offered others were real. When I sat with someone, I came from my heart, even when that heart was hurting.

This is heart work. It all comes from the heart.

I was helping others find their voices while I was still struggling to use my own. And perhaps that’s one of the saddest parts of this experience. I wasn’t just afraid of speaking up about what happened. I was afraid of losing the only community where I felt I belonged.

There’s another piece of this story I haven’t shared much. After my spiritual awakening, my then-wife told me during couples therapy that she was worried something bad was going to happen to me. She has a strong intuition, too. And as it turns out, something bad did happen.

But here’s what makes this even creepier. She had actually attended his healing circles twice and received readings from him. She had sat in the same room with this man, listened to him speak, and allowed him into her own spiritual space. And all the while, this was the same man who would later sexually assault me.

Just think about how fucking creepy that is.

But I never told her about the assault.

Why? Because I was afraid the first words out of her mouth would be, “I knew it or I told you so.”

For much of our nearly thirty-year relationship, I kept my deepest emotions to myself because I didn’t feel safe sharing them with her. That’s a long fucking time to keep parts of yourself hidden. So when something happened that left me feeling violated, confused, and unable to speak, I didn’t feel I could turn to the person who was supposed to be closest to me.

I’m not sharing this to blame her for what happened. She wasn’t responsible for another man’s actions. But years of feeling emotionally unsafe can teach a person to remain silent, even when they desperately need to be heard.

After we separated, I finally talked with my therapist about what had happened. She knew the dynamics of our relationship. She knew how difficult it had been for me to share my deepest emotions, and she understood why I hadn’t told my wife. When I explained that I feared hearing “I knew it” or “I told you so,” my therapist said she understood and encouraged me to keep this one to myself until I was ready to share.

She told me my wife didn’t need to know. And that helped me understand something. I wasn’t obligated to share one of the most painful experiences of my life with someone I didn’t feel emotionally safe sharing it with. Even if that person was my wife. Even if we’d spent nearly thirty years together.

So, if you’re reading this now, yes, your intuition was right. But this is why you’re finding out this way.

Having a voice means more than being able to speak. It means feeling safe enough to use it.

Now, let’s talk about these spiritual assholes.

The gurus, self-help fucks, homeless life coaches, bankrupt manifestation teachers, supposedly awakened shitheads, and all the other people who have convinced themselves they hold the keys to your enlightenment. Oh, and let’s not forget the church and its pedophile priests.

These people are human. Just fucking human. Humans who can become really good at talking, convincing, and manipulating people into believing they have all the answers and you need them. Some surround themselves with followers who practically worship them. And when someone speaks up about their dark side? Well, suddenly the person telling the truth becomes the problem.

How many times do we need to hear stories of sexual abuse, manipulation, and atrocities committed in the name of God or spirituality before we start questioning the people we’ve placed on pedestals?

A robe doesn’t make someone holy. A feather doesn’t make someone wise. A drum doesn’t make someone a shaman. And calling yourself a master doesn’t mean you’ve mastered a goddamn thing.

Finding My Voice Again

After the assault, I felt lost. The community I thought was my tribe seemed to disappear from my life. Or, as I eventually came to understand, perhaps I was the one who walked away.

I was carrying immense pain, shame, confusion, and anger. But I never stopped loving the work. When I sat with another human being, I wasn’t there to feed my ego, prove how powerful I was, or convince anyone I had special gifts. I was there because I genuinely loved helping people. And that love was real.

Being wounded doesn’t mean your heart isn’t capable of helping another human being. But it does mean you have a responsibility to keep doing your own work. And that’s something I think a whole lot of people in the spiritual world need to hear.

You don’t get to throw on a fucking robe, buy a drum, hang some feathers around your neck, and suddenly become an enlightened being who doesn’t have to look at their own shit.

I make fun of healers sometimes because I’ve met so many who seem completely consumed by their own chaos while trying to tell everyone else how to heal. But I also know what it’s like to carry pain while feeling a genuine calling to serve. There’s a difference between being wounded and refusing to look at your wounds.

And after shaman camp, I made a choice. I stepped into the darkness. I stopped running from the shame, the fear, the grief, the anger, and all the shit I’d spent years carrying. And I let the fire burn it all.

I didn’t ask it to be gentle. I allowed myself to die. Over and over and over again. Not a physical death, but the death of the identities, beliefs, patterns, and masks I’d mistaken for who I was.

Every time I thought I’d reached the bottom, there was another layer. Another wound. Another piece of myself asking to be seen, felt, and released. And I kept going. Some of it was absolutely fucking brutal. But I was finally willing to feel it all.

I wasn’t trying to become a better version of the man I’d been. I was allowing that man to fall away. Until eventually, spirit showed me I was ready to serve. Not as a master. Not as a guru. Not as someone with all the answers. Just a man who had finally become willing to walk through his own darkness before offering to accompany someone else through theirs.

I didn’t find my power by escaping the darkness. I found it by being willing to walk through it.

And that meant taking off the mask.

After shaman camp, I returned with a sense of power I hadn’t felt before and a voice that was no longer willing to remain suppressed.

A couple of days before an event hosted by the man who assaulted me, I had worked with another gentleman who, like me, had struggled with his voice. I am going to call him Tony. I knew Tony would be attending, and I wanted to see how he was doing.

I was hesitant to attend for another reason. Months earlier, I had shared an idea with the man who assaulted me about creating a gathering where healers could come together and receive healing themselves. We spend so much time helping others, but who’s taking care of the healers?

Well, apparently, he liked my idea enough to turn it into his own event. Without involving me. Imagine that.

But I wasn’t going there to confront him about it. I was going to see someone I’d connected with through healing work.

When I walked in, I felt my abusers fear. He saw me in my power, and I saw him for the creep he was. He tried to playfully speak with me, and I didn’t engage. I found Tony who I had come to see, and we began talking.

His energy was strong. His throat was open. He had found his voice again, too. It was fucking beautiful.

But then I noticed something else. The man who assaulted me had taken an interest in Tony’s partner, who was also involved in healing work and desperately wanted to become a shaman.

I recognized the pattern. The attention. The flattery. The stories about his own spiritual power. The way he made someone feel as though they were being welcomed into something special. The same shit he’d pulled with me.

And the partner was eating it up.

Then I learned that he had approached the partner and told him Tony was cheating on him.

Ya, what the fuck is that? That’s some teenage Mean Girls gossip shit.

Here was a grown-ass man presenting himself as a spiritual guide while inserting himself into someone else’s relationship. And from where I stood, it looked like he was trying to separate them so he could draw the partner closer to himself.

Distraction. Divide. Separate. Predator 101.

What struck me was how familiar it all felt. The same kind of attention that had once made me feel special was now being directed toward someone else. Someone who desperately wanted to be a shaman and seemed thrilled to be receiving attention from this supposedly powerful spiritual teacher.

I wondered whether he had any idea what he was stepping into.

Later, I wanted to bring the group together to dance and discover their soul songs. In my shamanic practice, a soul song as a song our soul carries through lifetimes, something that can help us connect with our power and expression.

People were excited. I encouraged the man hosting the event to participate because I knew others might feel more comfortable joining if he did. Soon, people were moving in a circle, singing, dancing, and expressing themselves. It was fucking beautiful.

And then there was this 6’6” giant suckling baby, shuffling his feet and mumbling.

The attention wasn’t on him, and it showed. People were finding their own power. Nobody needed the great spiritual leader in that moment. Especially not the person who now knew enough to shatter his carefully constructed world.

Afterward, I was ready to leave. He asked me to carry his bags down to the car.

Now, this guy carries giant bags of rocks and trinkets to set up what he calls his healing mesa. To me, it looks like a spiritual yard sale. He says it’s a healing mesa, borrowing from South American shamanic traditions, but the way he presents it feels like he’s treating something sacred like a trip through the spiritual aisle at Walmart.

I declined to carry his bags. Five minutes later, I saw his 90 pound older sister hauling a 50 pound bag of rocks down to the car.

Here’s this giant man, built like a linebacker, while his much smaller sister is struggling with bags of rocks. How fucking pathetic.

So I helped her.

And that was the last time I attended one of his gatherings.

Later, I tried posting a flyer for my men’s circle in his Facebook group, where members regularly shared events. Within about an hour, I was banned.

Do you see the pattern?

When I encountered people from that community afterward, some snubbed me or acted as though they didn’t know me. Even people I had worked with before.

I can’t tell you what they were told or what they believed. I can only tell you what I experienced. And it became increasingly clear that I no longer belonged in that space.

The Jaguar and the Return of My Voice

Now, this next part may sound pretty fucking far out if you’re unfamiliar with shamanic journeying. But I’m going to share it as I experienced it.

One night, my helping spirits woke me in the middle of the night. It was time for an upgrade. I was to work with jaguar hapé outside beneath the moonlight.

My jaguar helping spirit and I merged and went through a transformation together. I felt my hands become paws as I crawled around the yard, purging, moving, and releasing a weaker version of myself.

It was fucking intense. I felt myself expanding in new ways. My throat opened wide. My voice expanded. My power was rising.

Then I was launched into a journey. I watched my two guardians grab the soul of the man who had assaulted me and bring him into a cave in the lower world. This was the same cave where I had first met these guardians.

When I initially met my guardians, I had asked what they were guarding me from.

Their answer? Sexual abuse. That was about a year before the assault.

Ya, they warned me. The whisper knew.

To explain what happened next, I need to share a little about soul retrieval. In shamanic traditions, soul retrieval is a practice based on the understanding that traumatic experiences can cause parts of our soul or vital essence to separate from us. Modern psychology has its own language for responses to trauma, including dissociation. These aren’t necessarily the same thing, but the comparison can help explain the spiritual understanding.

In my work, helping spirits guide me toward soul parts that are ready to return. Sometimes I see what happened. Some of the things I’ve seen have been so disturbing that I’ve asked my helping spirits not to show me. I ask whether the soul part is ready to return, and through ceremony, I help welcome it home.

But there’s another side of shamanism that doesn’t get talked about nearly enough.

Dark shamanism.

In some shamanic traditions, there are teachings about practitioners who use spiritual power to manipulate, control, or harm others. And one of the concepts within those teachings is the stealing or taking of another person’s power or soul parts.

Think about that for a moment. Someone who presents themselves as a healer, someone you trust enough to open yourself up to, using that very vulnerability to take something from you.

In shamanism, a person can experience soul loss through trauma. But some traditions also describe the deliberate taking or holding of another person’s spiritual power.

And that distinction matters deeply to me. Because when I was assaulted, I didn’t just feel physically violated.

I experienced him taking part of my voice.

My ability to speak. My essence. He wanted me small.

And what happened in that cave wasn’t some gentle conversation about returning what had been lost.

It was a fucking battle.

My helping spirits brought his soul into the cave, and he refused to release the part of my essence he was holding. My guardians fought him.

For three days, I returned to that journey as the struggle continued. At one point, I saw one of my giant guardians standing over him with a foot pressed against his neck. They weren’t asking him politely anymore. They were fighting to bring my essence home.

And eventually, they did.

My voice was mine again.

Now, in some shamanic traditions, practitioners speak of traveling beyond the physical body, journeying in spirit to other places and realms. Some traditions even contain accounts of shamans appearing physically in locations far from where their bodies are.

I’ve had experiences of this myself. People have told me they’ve seen me in places where I wasn’t physically present.

So when I say I saw the man who assaulted me outside my healing space, I don’t mean I saw him standing there in the flesh. I saw him in spirit, watching through the window.

During a medicine ceremony with a friend, we both saw him there. And my jaguar wasn’t having any of that shit.

My jaguar attacked him and drove him away. It’s pretty fucking amazing to watch a jaguar leap through a wall to protect you.

But he kept coming back. And eventually, something changed. He came asking for forgiveness.

The man who had once presented himself as so powerful was now humbled. A big fucking coward.

For a while, my response was simple.

Fuck off.

And off he would get chased by my jaguar.

But eventually, I recognized that I wanted closure. I could see the hurt and fear inside this giant man. I could have compassion for that without excusing what he’d done to me.

So I offered him forgiveness. I have not seen him appear since.

As a Cancer, I may never forget. But I have learned to forgive.

Twelve Hours Later — Closing the Circle

And I have to add something here.

I wrote this piece full of emotion. For someone like me, who feels so deeply, writing this was an incredibly emotional experience. There were so many tears. My body was shaking. The love, the hate, the grief, the anger. I allowed all of it to flow through me.

It had to come out this way. This was how I needed to heal this wound.

Twelve hours later, I'm lying in bed. At peace. Back to being full of love.

And I want to say something about this man.

I do not say this as a victim. I say this as a being of love who happens to be in a body.

I see the hurt inside of him.

Growing up gay in a Mormon community. How hard that must have been, having to mask who he was since childhood. Then, once freed from that prison of Mormonism, coming out in the 80s, at the height of the fear surrounding AIDS.

I can feel just how dangerous the world must have seemed to him. Worrying about getting your ass kicked because you're a “fag” by hateful fucks who are repressing their own sexuality. And worrying about expressing your sexuality with an absolute fear of an unknown deadly disease.

I once watched him sing karaoke on his birthday. It was one of the saddest things I've ever experienced. Here was this person everyone looks up to, someone they believe has all the answers, singing this somber-ass 80s song.

And I felt the pain. The loneliness. The isolation.

That is his shadow to face. The grief of a life that could have been had society not been so cruel.

I believe that wound drives his cravings for flesh. And because the inner work hasn't been done, those cravings express themselves in predatory ways.

He is a slave to the flesh.

He can't see that, but I do.

He talks about how happy he is being single, but I don't believe that's the whole truth. I see a fear of never being loved for who he truly is. Of never being fully seen.

And isn't that what we all want?

We all deserve love. We all deserve to be seen. To me, those are basic human needs, right alongside shelter and safety. It's a shame that something so fundamental can be so fucking hard to find.

And it has to start with loving ourselves for who we are. Not suppressing the parts of ourselves that are simply asking to be loved.

I have empathy for this man. Because I am love, and I can see the hurt in others.

It's truly a gift that sometimes feels like a fucking curse in this world.

I feel as though I can see, at a soul level, where the suffering lives. The wound that shapes someone into who they currently are.

And now I can say that I truly, truly forgive him.

Because writing this freed me.

It freed the stuck energy inside of me. The emotions I'd been carrying. The things I hadn't been able to say.

And now, if he reads this, which I suspect he will, perhaps he'll finally see how his refusal to face his own wounds has harmed others.

I can only hope he does that work.

Because I believe there's love inside him that simply doesn't know how to express itself without causing harm.

And to close the circle, I would even offer to hold space for the grief that needs to come out.

But only after he faces his own demons.

Enter the Next Shady Shaman

You’d think one experience like that would be enough. Apparently, Spirit had other plans.

I honestly believe my helping spirits placed these two people in front of me to show me exactly how not to be.

Spirit had suggested that I go to one of Denver’s big metaphysical fairs. Now, Spirit knows I fucking hate these things. To me, they’re spiritual materialism at its absolute worst. Fucking tarot readers by the dozens, crystals everywhere, and lost sheep lining up to have someone else tell them what to do with their lives.

I get it. I can see the confusion in people. I’ve been there myself. But being a giant empathic sponge, these events can make me physically ill.

So Spirit knows all this and still tells me to go because I’m going to meet someone. I was really hoping it would be my divine goddess future partner.

Nope.

I walked around, getting a feel for the place and observing all the ways people try to market themselves. I passed a booth a couple of times advertising a guy as a “Master Shaman.”

Gross. Who the fuck has an ego so big that they’re calling themselves a master shaman?

While walking around, I ran into another shamanic practitioner I’d met before, Michael.

I like Michael. He has such a gentle soul, a beautiful heart, and a genuine humility about him. We chatted for a few minutes.

And I want to point something out here. There are good people doing this work. People who aren’t trying to build a fucking empire around themselves. People who lead with their hearts instead of their egos.

Michael is one of those people.

One time, while we were chatting, Michael gave me a palm reading. He looked at my hand and told me I was a healer who would be in the spotlight.

Fuck, did that make me sick to my stomach.

I asked him, “What does that even mean?”

He said it again. I was a healer who would be in the spotlight.

Now, I can only hope that means I’ll be recognized for being the guy who never wanted to be in the fucking spotlight in the first place. Or maybe for being the guy who said, “Fuck this, I’m going to do it my way,” no matter how difficult that might be.

Because I have absolutely no desire to become some spiritual celebrity. I don’t want followers. I don’t want people worshipping me. I don’t want to spend my life promoting myself.

Hell, I hate having to put my free men’s circle flyer on Facebook.

I just want to do the work. Help people. Sit with people. Love people. And if something I do helps another human being find their own power, that’s enough for me.

So if there’s a spotlight in my future, I hope it’s shining on the work and the people being helped, not on some inflated version of me.

And that’s why I appreciate Michael. He’s humble. He’s kind. He’s genuine. He doesn’t need to put on a fucking show to be a beautiful human being.

That matters because I’m not writing this to shit on everyone in the spiritual world. I’m writing it because I’m sick of the frauds making it harder to recognize the genuine people.

After talking with Michael, I passed the Master Shaman’s booth again. And then I felt it. Spirit was pushing me to stop. This was who I was supposed to meet.

Well, fuck.

He was offering five-minute consultations. There were two people working with him who I spoke with first, and holy shit were they promoting this guy.

The great Master Shaman. The extraordinary teacher. The spiritual powerhouse.

The whole thing felt fucking weird and creepy.

Then I got to meet the great Master Shaman himself, along with his translator. I sat down. He drummed for about thirty seconds.

And then he told me I needed to work on forgiveness.

I immediately started crying. Because in that moment, I realized something. I had forgiven the man who sexually assaulted me.

But I hadn’t forgiven myself.

That night, I went home and performed a forgiveness ceremony for myself. And damn, was it powerful. I allowed myself to feel what I’d been carrying and finally offer myself the forgiveness I’d been withholding.

When the ceremony was over, I felt a peace I hadn’t known before. That alone made the trip to the fair worthwhile.

But here’s the important part. He pointed me toward forgiveness. I was the one who went home and did the work.

He also told me I needed to start my men’s group. I hadn’t told him Spirit had been pushing me to do this for over a year. He asked for my number, and I left.

A couple of days later, he texted me offering to send me wisdom. I had asked about his healing sessions because I thought it would be interesting to experience a healing from someone claiming to practice Siberian shamanic traditions.

He invited me to meet. I was expecting healing work. After all, this was a fucking Master Shaman.

We drummed together. And then he said we’d pray for help.

That was it.

Prayer. Nothing else.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against prayer. Prayer can be beautiful and powerful. But when someone is presenting themselves as a master of shamanic healing and I’ve come specifically to experience their healing work, I expect a little more than drumming and prayers.

Especially when there’s an entire promotional team telling everyone how extraordinary this man is.

At our next meeting, he again encouraged me to start the men’s group. That did light a fire under my ass. Later that day, I went into the woods to drum, sing, and ask my helping spirits for guidance.

Within an hour, I had found a monthly venue willing to host my circle for free and help with marketing. I was ecstatic. I called him to share the news.

And at that point, I was still curious about what I might learn from him. But the more time I spent around him, the more I noticed something.

There was an awful lot of show. An awful lot of promotion. An awful lot of talk about spiritual power. And very little of the actual healing work I’d come hoping to experience.

The Energy of Money

Now here’s where the shit starts getting weird again.

The Master Shaman said he wanted to teach me about energy. Wonderful. Except his great spiritual wisdom came in the form of these cheesy-ass AI cartoon videos from some weird online spiritual school.

What the actual fuck?

I watched them. I wasn’t learning anything. He’d ask what I thought. I’d tell him I wasn’t learning anything. Then he’d send more fucking videos.

I looked into this school and found a strange website promoting memberships, but very little clear information about its history or teaching structure. Something felt off. My suspicion grew.

So I started watching his older YouTube videos and Instagram posts. There were all these videos of men’s retreats with drone footage of guys outside doing synchronized punching movements. It looked like some weird spiritual martial arts commercial. Totally staged, at least to my eyes.

He apparently hosted men’s retreats, although I found it surprisingly difficult to get clear information about them. He moved back and forth between California and Denver.

Then I found older videos of him onstage teaching energy work. Shiny shoes. Slacks. Button-down shirts.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with dressing nicely. But when I put all these pieces together, I started wondering what the fuck this guy was actually selling. And how to you go from dress clothes to being a Siberian Master Shaman in a few years. Well I’ll tell you, just change clothes.

I kept asking questions about his training and background. And I wasn’t getting clear answers.

Then he told me he wanted to teach me about the energy of money. How to make money doing spiritual work.

Oh, here we go.

He had an entire structure for charging men and getting them into workshops and retreats. I listened.

A few days before my first men’s circle, he called and said he wanted to come support me. Immediately, something inside me went on alert. I had worked hard to create this circle, and

I wasn’t about to let some self-proclaimed master swoop in and make it his.

So I told him he could attend, and I’d give him thirty minutes to speak. But I made something very clear.

This is my group.

I didn’t want any confusion about who was hosting.

His thirty minutes turned into more than an hour. I let it go because the gathering was going well. And I’ll give him credit for something. He’s personable. He’s funny. He knows how to hold a crowd.

Which, frankly, is a pretty useful skill when you’re trying to sell people something.

At the end, he started pulling the men aside individually and handing them his business card. Now that fucking annoyed me.

These men had come to connect, share, and experience brotherhood. Not to be recruited into someone else’s business.

A week later, he invited me to meet him at City Park. When I arrived, he was meeting with a woman and giving her some papers. We sat down and chatted.

Then one of the guys who had been promoting him at the metaphysical fair showed up. The Master Shaman and his translator stepped away to speak with him privately for about twenty minutes, leaving me sitting there.

When they came back, they described this guy as one of their best students. Interesting.

I’d recognized him from Facebook. His page said he taught meditation, but everything I’d seen him posting was promoting the Master Shaman. Not his own work. Just the Master Shaman.

And then came the truth. The great spiritual revelation. The secret teaching I’d apparently been waiting for.

A fucking referral program.

He told me two of the men from my circle had contacted him. He wanted to establish a business relationship where I would recruit men for his workshops and retreats, and he’d give me a cut. A kicker. A commission.

There it was. The Master Shaman’s grand plan. I was supposed to bring him the men, and he’d turn them into his paying customers.

Another fucking fake in this spiritual marketplace.

I told him I’d think about it. And I immediately left.

On the drive home, I thanked spirit. Because now I understood the real lesson.

He continued texting me, asking what I thought about his proposal. Eventually, I responded. How exactly was giving him my clients supposed to help me build my own work?

He explained that I’d receive a percentage.

I told him that was bullshit. First, I’d be giving up the full value of providing my own sessions. Second, I’d lose the opportunity to build ongoing relationships with the people I worked with. Third, I’d lose the referrals that come from doing meaningful work and building trust.

But more importantly, I explained something that apparently wasn’t getting through his thick spiritual-salesman skull.

I started my men’s circle because I genuinely wanted to help men.

I wanted to create a place where men could connect, be vulnerable, support one another, and experience brotherhood. It wasn’t designed to be a fucking sales funnel.

He insisted that men needed to pay. They needed to attend his retreats. And they’d pay.

“They always pay,” he told me.

Let that sink in.

They always pay.

Not “How can we help these men?” Not “What do these men need?” Not “How can we create a safe space for them?”

They always pay.

To me, that said everything. Here was a man looking at the guys in my circle as potential paychecks.

And I was fucking disgusted. Sick to my stomach again. And when you are a strong empath like me it is a disgusting visceral feeling in my entire body.

He even offered to have me attend his retreats so I could learn more.

No thanks. I was done.

My experience with the first man had taught me to trust myself. This guy showed his cards way too early. At least the first man had spent time pretending he cared for me dearly before setting his hook.

This one practically handed me the sales brochure.

And you might be wondering if I'm offering forgiveness here, too.

I learned a lot from this fuck. But thankfully, this experience didn't create a wound that needed healing.

He's just a con being a con, doing what he thinks he needs to do to survive.

He isn't worth another thought once I finish writing this piece.

All frauds eventually reveal themselves.

His day will come.

I can already picture him in prison, leading a group of inmates through his spiritual martial arts routine.

The Fucking Spiritual Marketplace

And this is why I’m writing this. Because we have to watch out for each other.

People entering spiritual communities are often incredibly open and vulnerable. They may be grieving, lonely, traumatized, confused, or going through a spiritual awakening that’s blown their entire understanding of life wide open.

They’re looking for connection. They’re looking for answers. They’re looking for someone who understands.

And along comes some asshole with a drum, a fancy title, a beautiful website, and a ten-week program that promises to change their life. For the low, low price of whatever the fuck they’re charging this month.

And people buy it. Because they’re hurting. Because they want to believe. Because someone has convinced them that the answers they need are outside themselves.

And I fucking hate it.

I honestly hate this fake spa-spiritual world we’ve invented. The spiritual materialism. The endless programs. The certifications that mean nothing to nobody. The memberships. The retreats. The ten-packs of healing sessions.

Every other person seems to be a fucking healer, life coach, energy master, or spiritual teacher with a program to sell. And some of them haven’t even begun to look at their own shadow.

They’re so busy teaching everyone else how to ascend that they haven’t bothered to look at the shit they’re standing in.

It’s the same old bullshit we’ve seen in organized religion. Only now, instead of churches and priests, we’ve got healing centers, gurus, and spiritual influencers.

Different costumes. Same human ego. Same hunger for power, attention, and money.

And let’s be clear about something.

I am not saying every healer is a fraud.

Remember Michael? That gentle, humble man with a beautiful heart? And my friend Sidney and Sarah who absolutely pour their hearts into their work despite their own struggles to survive.

There are people like them doing this work. People who genuinely care. People who listen. People who don’t need to convince everyone they’re the most powerful person in the room.

And there are people who charge for their work while remaining deeply ethical and heart-centered. I charge for my own healing sessions. People need to eat. People have bills to pay. There’s nothing wrong with receiving an energy exchange for meaningful work.

But there’s a massive fucking difference between being compensated for helping someone and designing your entire spiritual practice around extracting money from vulnerable people.

And that difference matters.

I don’t want followers. I don’t want worshippers. I don’t want people convinced that they need me to access their own power. I want people to recognize the power they already carry. I had a gal ask me if her boyfriend was cheating on her. I said “I am not going to answer that because you already know.” Why would I take the authority away from her?

And if they no longer need me?

Fucking beautiful. That’s something to celebrate.

So please, question the people you give authority to. Question their motives. Question their training. Question their promises. Question why they need you to believe they have special access to something you don’t.

And most importantly, trust your gut.

If something feels wrong, pay attention. If someone makes you feel small so they can feel powerful, get the fuck away.

You don’t owe anyone your body, your trust, your money, or your obedience because they call themselves a shaman, healer, guru, or spiritual teacher.

And if you question them and they respond with intimidation, manipulation, or attempts to isolate you from others?

There’s your answer.

Overturning Fucking Tables

Which brings me to where spirit seems to be pushing me now.

Death.

Yep. Death.

And strangely enough, that makes my heart and soul light up.

I’ve been feeling a powerful calling toward working with people nearing the end of their lives. There’s something so fucking raw and real about being with someone as they approach death.

The masks fall away. The bullshit becomes less important. The fancy titles, expensive programs, spiritual status, and carefully curated identities don’t mean much when someone is lying in a bed facing the unknown.

What matters is presence. A hand to hold. Someone willing to listen. Someone who isn’t afraid to sit with fear, grief, uncertainty, and love.

Through my shamanic practice, I can help souls transition and navigate the afterlife. But I also understand that sometimes the most meaningful thing I can do is simply be another human being sitting beside someone.

No performance. No guru. No fucking program.

Just presence.

I’ve wondered for a long time why spirit has had me die over and over again, shedding parts of myself until it felt as though nothing was left. And now it’s becoming clearer.

I’ve explored chaplaincy as a possible way to do this work professionally. And once again, I ran into institutional bullshit.

The church has a fucking cock block on so much of this work.

Want to sit with someone who’s dying and offer spiritual support? Well, depending on the position, you may need a Master of Divinity degree, hundreds of hours of clinical training, and religious endorsement.

Now, here’s something I want you to think about.

I was a paramedic.

It took me four semesters of training to become someone who could push drugs, intubate patients, and shock people in the back of a bouncing ambulance while family members cried for their loved ones.

Think about that for a fucking minute.

I could be responsible for keeping someone alive while their entire world was falling apart. I could perform invasive medical procedures, administer powerful medications, and make life-or-death decisions in the middle of chaos.

All while a family stood nearby, terrified that the person they loved might die.

Four semesters.

But now, if I want to be paid to sit beside someone in hospice, hold their hand, listen to their fears, and offer spiritual presence, suddenly I may need years of theological education, clinical training, and a letter from a religious institution saying I’m in good standing.

Does that sound right to you?

I’m not against training. I’m not against learning how to work ethically with vulnerable people. That’s important. But I am absolutely going to question why someone needs an advanced religious degree just to be recognized as capable of offering spiritual presence.

Guess what?

Humans have been sitting with the dying since humans existed.

We’ve held hands. We’ve sung songs. We’ve cried. We’ve prayed. We’ve told stories. We’ve helped one another cross that threshold long before anyone invented religion or a Master of Divinity degree.

And now some institutions act as though you need their permission to do something profoundly human.

And the hypocrisy?

Holy fucking shit.

Some of these same religious institutions have spent decades covering up sexual abuse by pedophile priests. Moving rapist priests from one church to another. Protecting the institution instead of the children. Protecting reputations instead of victims.

And let’s not forget the centuries when religious authorities persecuted, tortured, and killed people for practicing spirituality outside the church’s approved beliefs. Mystics, people accused of witchcraft, religious dissenters, and countless ordinary people who were simply different or happened to get caught in the fucking crossfire.

Some of those people were our spiritual ancestors. People who sought connection with the sacred through nature, ceremony, and their own direct experiences. People who didn’t need an institution standing between them and the divine.

And now, after centuries of persecuting people who challenged its authority, the church still gets to help decide who’s qualified to provide spiritual care to someone who’s dying?

And then they want to tell the rest of us who is morally qualified to provide spiritual care?

FUCK YOU!!!!!!

And somewhere in the middle of this rant, I've got Rage Against the Machine screaming in my head:

“Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me!”

Because apparently my inner rebellious Jesus has a fucking soundtrack.

Where the fuck are the morals?

Where was all that sacred accountability when children were being raped? Where was the concern for protecting vulnerable people then?

I have no desire to surrender my spiritual understanding to an institution simply so it can give me permission to be present with another human being.

So for now, I’ll volunteer. I’ll learn from the dying, their families, the people already doing this work, and the helping spirits who have guided me this far.

Because I’d rather do meaningful work than spend my life chasing titles, credentials, and someone else’s approval. And I’ll continue finding my own way.

Recently, I asked my spirit teacher Jesus what I should do.

His message was simple.

Break down walls. Overturn tables. Make it your own.

Now that’s a Jesus I can get behind. The rebellious one. The one who challenged institutions and questioned the people claiming authority over others. The one who overturned the fucking tables.

Because sometimes the most loving thing you can do is call bullshit when you see it.

And maybe that’s what this entire journey has been about. Finding my voice. Learning to trust it. Learning that I don’t have to hand my power over to anyone, no matter how enlightened they claim to be.

I don’t need to become a master. I don’t need followers. I don’t need to convince anyone that I have all the answers. I certainly don’t.

I’m still learning. I’m still questioning. I’m still making mistakes. But I know what integrity feels like to me. And I know what it feels like when someone tries to take my voice away.

I have spent enough of my life being silent.

So I’m going to keep speaking, keep questioning, keep loving, and keep doing my best to lift people up.

Not because I’m special. Not because I’m some enlightened master.

But because I’m human.

And sometimes, being a loving human is the most sacred fucking work there is.

Whew! I found my fucking voice in this piece.