You’re listening to the transform your life from the inside out podcast. This episode is titled shaman’s tips for an amazing 2026 part eight. And the meat and potatoes this week is have you forgotten your spiritual seniority in this episode? I know I’ve talked about it before, but I want to talk about it again. And I want to talk about the reason that many of us, we air quote can’t find our spiritual seniority. 
 
And I want to talk about ways around that so that we can more deeply connect with who we are at a spiritual level. And we can actually start fostering our seniority to create the best coming year of our life. Keep listening. Hi, I’m Jim Fortin, and you’re about to start transforming your life from the inside out with this podcast. I’m widely considered the leader in subconscious transformation, and I’ve coached super achievers all around the world for over 25 years. 
 
Here you’re going to find no rah rah motivation and no hype because this podcast is a combination of brain science, transformational psychology, and ancient wisdom all rolled into one to take your life to levels you’ve never thought possible. If you’re wanting a lot more in life, to feel better, to heal, to have peace of mind, to feel powerful and alive, and to bring more abundance and prosperity into your life, then this podcast is for you. 
 
because you’re going to start learning how to master your mind and evolve your consciousness. And when you do that, anything you want then becomes possible for you. I’m glad you’re here. Okay. Spiritual seniority. I know I’ve used that word before. We’ve talked about that word before, seniority. And many people don’t understand the word and the way that I use it. And many people also might say, well, don’t you mean personal power? 
 
Yes, to some degree, but for most of us, personal power is first filtered through an ego angle, meaning from the container of skin, the human identity. So let’s look into what is seniority. And seniority is full awareness that you now notice the word full awareness that you are not first a human being. You are first 
 
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the spiritual essence in a human body, or you are a spiritual essence in a human body. And the biggest mistake that a lot of us make, which just shuts the door to everything else, is we attach and we identify to the body. We identify our entire existence by the body that we’re in, and that’s extremely limited. 
 
What I want to do in this episode is further explore more deeply explore the concept of seniority and how you can start discovering and start fostering it in yourself. Now, when we look at seniority, a good metaphor would be or an analogy, excuse me. If you look at a company or you look at the military and you look at a senior military officer or company, you look at a senior officer in a company. 
 
Basically it means they’re higher up the ranks. They’re higher up the ladder. They’re closer to being at the top of the organization. Well, that’s kind of the same thing when I talk about seniority, but spiritual seniority. But most of us, what we do is we look at our life, but the top of our organization, so to speak, is at the limits of the thinking of the ego. So we go to the limits of the thinking of the ego. 
 
not even recognizing that there’s a whole other 1000 floors above that, but we have to be in our seniority to explore that. So seniority could apply to the military. They could apply to a company, but the same thing with your own spiritual, you know, your spiritual evolution, as I alluded to a bit ago is you don’t know your seniority, meaning you cannot see your seniority when you look through the lens of your ego and 
 
When you look through the ends of the lens of your ego, specifically, you’re looking through your blind spots. You’re looking through your limitations. And by the way, this is titled tips from a shaman about an amazing 2026. This is foundational. And Don Javier is constantly talking to those of us that work with him, constantly talking about your seniority. I think another simple way to say that would be 
 
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know yourself as soul. Now I mentioned that before and when I say know yourself as soul, what does that mean to you? How do you experience it? How do you process it? How do you feel it? How do you live from that place to know yourself as soul? So I want to go back here for a second. You know, we’ve all heard, and I heard it back in the early nineties, the first time I heard it. 
 
We are not first human beings. We are having spiritual experiences. We are spiritual beings having a human experience. But what, what does that truly mean? Because again, I heard it 40 years ago, thereabouts, and we hear it. And for many of us, and especially if you’re listening to my podcast, it makes sense to you. You totally get it. And we might do things like put on the garb, the robes, the white clothing, 
 
maybe go to meditations, whatever it might be. And we’re wearing the spiritual garb, but we’re playing an identity role and we still don’t fully understand or integrate into the spiritual essence of us. Because what we do, and I know that we’re all pretty much the same. Many years ago when I heard this, not from Don Alvier, but back in 1992 or so, first time I heard it, I’m like, yep, that makes sense. It resonates. 
 
but I could never integrate what does it mean? And I want to talk about how even the world of the past, let’s say 30, 35 years has further separated us from living in our seniority and evolving our seniority and understanding our seniority. I’ll get to that in just a moment. But when we look at this phrase and trying to understand ourself first as a spiritual being that’s having a human experience, 
 
As I alluded to just a bit ago, we are generally trying to understand that from the current human identity and ego. Now, whatever the limitations are of the current human identity and ego will then blind any understanding about the seniority. I’ve used this example before. If you’re in a box and 
 
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you want to get out of the box. And I tell you that the instructions are on the outside of the box. You got to get outside of the box to read the instructions. Most of us were wanting to understand herself in a more spiritual way. Now that can be spiritual application for some people, meaning you go to spiritual retreats, by the way, it doesn’t mean you’re spiritual or spiritual guard, where you go to unity church or universal Unitarian. 
 
or I think it’s called universalist, unitarian, whatever it might be, not criticizing whatsoever. I’ve been down all those paths before. And I think back on myself many years ago when I literally was a junkie for metaphysical stores and the crystals and everything. All those things are just applications, meaning they’re not you. There are things that your identity and maybe your soul calls to, but you know what? Those are all applications. 
 
And you can have all those things and all those trappings and go to all those events or retreats or whatever, but it still doesn’t mean you’re in touch with the spiritual lessons of you. So how do we know ourselves first as a spiritual being so that we can reclaim our seniority? First question I have for you is what keeps you? What keeps you from reclaiming and knowing your seniority? 
 
And the bottom line, I’ve already alluded to it. It all comes down to your identity. But here’s what I want to share. And I’ve shared this before, but I also know even when Don Javier is talking to me, he can say something at one time and I’m like, yeah, okay. I think I get it. And then I might digest it. And then another time he says it again, but he says it in a different way. And I immediately boom. 
 
It makes sense to me. So it all comes down to identity. I know I’ve said this before. We have two identities and we have the identity that most of us live in. And that’s the identity of the 3D vessel, 3D container of you, man, woman, American, rich, poor, gay, straight, transgender, black, whatever the identity is. And what most of us do is we get lost and we live in that identity. 
 
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but see the other identity, which doesn’t have a name, so to speak, is the spiritual essence of us. And many times our spiritual essence will drive us and we feel just a natural pull to do spiritual things. As I’d mentioned a few times earlier, like the retreats and different things, not recognizing we’re still carrying our 3D human ego, container, identity into the spiritual experience. 
 
So we can only process the spiritual experience based upon the limitations of the 3d human identity. So the way that I experienced it and look at it, and by the way, it’s taken me many years to literally take this apart and understand it in my own mind is I know that there are two of me. Now there’s Jim Forten. That is the physical body. That is the physical height, the physical features and the 
 
monetary aspects, the vocabulary aspects, the nationality, all these kinds of things. That’s one part. That’s the container. And it’s so easy to live from our containers. But on the other side, the other identity is my soul, the spiritual essence of me, the life force that cannot be destroyed. I don’t even know how to put it other than my soul. 
 
But here’s where I would get lost many years ago. And I see many people getting lost as we listen to this and we understand it. But what we’re not really looking at is or exploring what does that mean? What does that mean to be a soul? I was talking to a good friend of mine this past weekend. She came to visit. She’s very wealthy. She’s a big influencer online. She’s taken a step back from her business. 
 
And she was talking about how much she loved to travel. Now, is that spiritual and enough itself? Well, yeah, it could be because that could be how she experiences life that could bring her soul alive. And I’m not saying she did this at all. I’m just using it as an example. But what many of us do is we tend to think we’re spiritual, but then we do spiritual. You know, we do things like in the three D. 
 
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And we don’t recognize that we kind of forgot to bring that soulful part of us into the process of what we’re doing in our 3d. Now, again, my friend, I’m only using this person as an example that has nothing to do with how they’re approaching the world because I personally think they are very spiritual at a very deep level. But it’s a crap that I’ve fallen in before is that, okay, I at an identity level, I know that I am a spiritual person. 
 
that’s a whole different ball of wax than knowing myself as soul. Because when I know myself as soul, that means that I might do things in a different way with different guidance and different knowing and different awareness than what my spiritual ego might do it. So many times our spiritual ego, I see it over and over again. And I put myself in that own category. 
 
And this is what I want to say. Somebody asked me today that they want to become a coach and they said, well, shouldn’t I have my entire life figured out before I become a coach? And my comment was along these lines is that no one has their life figured out. I don’t care who it is. I don’t know. does. And once we figure something out, that just means there’s something more to experience and another door to go through and more places to grow and more things to figure out. 
 
It’s always a journey. I remember many years ago, I was sitting with Don Javier and somebody in the room had said, what’s the end game, meaning the end game of our incarnations? Because this person Don Javier is talking about, we keep coming back. That person was like, well, okay, so we keep coming back, but what’s the end game? And that’s, that’s exactly what they asked. And Don Javier said, you will 
 
always be looking into the abyss, meaning the foreverness. And it’s always there is no end game. It’s a process that goes into infinity and beyond if we can even comprehend that. But see, most of us live our lives. I want to make this really simple, okay, because I’m guaranteeing you that most of you will find yourself in a place that steals your seniority. 
 
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and prevent you from knowing yourself in a more profound way at a more profound level. Because most of us live in our lower human container identity, meaning we only live as the bag of skin and the identity that that bag of skin has and whatever that identity might be for you, a black man, a black woman, a gay man, a gay woman, a rich man or rich, whatever it might be. So we live in the identity. 
 
And we kind of, instead of recognizing that our soulfulness is the primary aspect of our being, we make our soulfulness the secondary aspect of our being and our identity, meaning our 3D identity, as the primary aspect of our being. And we have it backwards. But why? I mean, how does so many of us, billions of us, why do we have it backwards? Well, a couple of reasons. One, plain and simple. 
 
You learned it. I mean, I learned from my parents about what the world is and about what money is and this is and relationships and marriage and jobs and careers and homes and mortgages and blah, blah, blah. You learn the same things. However, we’re living in a different world now. Your identity is groped, fed, kept fearful, meaning you’re a human identity on overdrive. 
 
And that’s because of the constant news and information coming into our life. That is because of one thing, big time social media. We’ll talk a little bit about that in just a moment, but I understand we need money to exist. Okay. Because I know that when you’re hungry, you’re like, Jim, you don’t understand them hungry. And so then we try to create from the 3d ego and the identity. 
 
without even recognizing it’s not the 3D ego identity action that creates most generally, it’s the soulful energy that comes into this process of creation. We have to create from the seniority and the spiritual essence of us because I look at my own life and when I have done the best in the 3D world, meaning I’ve knocked it out of the park economically, health-wise, and in every possible way, 
 
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is when I put the least attention and focus on my 3d reality. I just lived from the joy in me and what brought life to me. And then when I started focusing on business and money and expansion and growth, all things that were taught to have things in the 3d world, I noticed proportionally a contraction of all these things that I had. 
 
So where we truly wanna work from, if you truly want freedom, and by the way I’ve said it before, you do have freedom right now. So many people place freedom as one of their highest values, and you already have that. You have freedom because you have choice, and as long as you have choice, choice is free will. As long as you have choice and free will, you will always have freedom. Right now you may be driving, you may be walking, you may be jogging, you may be folding clothes at home, you may be cooking dinner, I don’t know. 
 
but you have the choice, any activity that you might be doing, to stop doing it, to keep doing it, to do more, to turn off this podcast, to keep listening, to yell at the kids, to whatever it is, you have the freedom to do that, and we always have that freedom, but we don’t know we have freedom, and then what we do is we chase freedom. Okay, now as I said before, how did we get here? 
 
So in recent episode, I said this maybe, I don’t know, two or three weeks ago. Don Javier said this to me and a couple of people that were around him at that point at dinner one night. He said, to change the world, I have to change myself. To change myself, I have to stop my world. When I stop my world, I can change myself. And when I can change myself, I can change the world. 
 
Do you notice how so many of us work backwards because we’re trying to change the world. And if we’re not trying to change the macro world, we’re trying to change the micro world, meaning our money, our health, our relationships, our mortgage, our home, our business, whatever it might be. But notice what he said, because this will lead to your seniority to stop the world. What he said is to change myself. I have to stop my world, but 
 
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What does that mean? You’ll find truth in this. Even if you want to refute this or you think it’s not true for you, I promise you, you will find truth in this. The world owns most of us. Now, what I mean by that is the political structures, the religious structures, the media structures, the money structures, social media. So we are constantly, it’s like being in a clothes dryer. 
 
that’s on high heat, constantly tumbling and tumbling and tumbling and tumbling. And we have the tumbling news cycles and the tumbling noise coming at you from CNN and Fox and Reuters and the White House and Ukraine and China and here and your local community and the local police and your local taxes and the family and commercialism. 
 
and traveling and this weekend, Thanksgiving next week and all these kinds of things. We have all of this noise media coming at us. And then what happens is we find we’re caught up in that clothes dryer, so to speak, and it’s just constant tumbling and tumbling and tumbling and tumbling. And a way to start returning to yourself is get out of that because it’s constant noise. And the noise is what prevents you 
 
from further exploring and even touching upon and knowing your own seniority. Because when you have that seniority, you can create the most extraordinary life in a life you can’t even imagine. So first things first, and this is gonna be an ouch, a big ouch. Stop the scroll. Now personally, I have a team. The team does everything for me. Personally, I don’t go on the Instagram. Personally, 
 
I don’t go on to Facebook. Personally, I stay away from X or Twitter or whatever the hell they call it. Does that hurt me in my 3D? Could I expand my business even more if I did all that? Absolutely, I could. But you know what? I don’t want to sacrifice myself in that kind of way because that’s all energetic absorption if I were to do stuff like that. And I have no desire to do that. 
 
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So if you want to see how much you’re absorbed in the world, a little challenge for you, a little request. If you want to see how much the world owns you, well, detox for 30 days. No social media, no scrolling, none of that. In the event you might have to use social media like you might run a Facebook group, okay, go in the group and look at nothing else, but go in the group and do what you need to do and get right back out again. And you could say, well, Jim, 
 
I don’t listen to social media or I don’t follow social media. That’s fine. What about the news? Leave it alone for 30 days. Here’s another one. One of the most peaceful times of my life was a decade in the nineties. I had no TV in the nineties and I would read every single night for 10 years. My evenings were quiet and I would read. 
 
Now it was easier back then because we didn’t have all the distractions that we have now. Okay. But I literally was with myself and a book, meaning in terms of my, and my mind and using my mind every single night, but it was solitude and peace. And I didn’t have the world bombarding me from the outside. And even if you get on the social media, you’re going to get bombarded. 
 
I believe back in the 1970s we saw something like, I don’t know, I don’t recall the exact statistics. The 1970s we saw something like 30 ads per day. Now we see something like, I don’t know, 2,000 ads per day. I mean, even look at a news cycle and all the ads in the sidebar, I mean, we’re just bombarded. All of this chip by chip by chip by chip, it literally takes away. 
 
and pulls away your seniority as a soulful spiritual being. Okay, so something else you can do, and this might be more challenging for people if you have kids, but more you alone time. That’s it. Just you. And that’s probably one of the most powerful ways is to get off from social media, cut out the news cycle and regulate your information intake from the external world and 
 
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Here’s where it gets even more powerful for you. Ground yourself. Now, what I mean by that is take off your shoes and go sit outside and put your feet in the grass. You’re literally grounding yourself energetically. You’re connecting with Pacha Mama, Mother Earth, and that’s very healing. Go up and be a tree hugger. Put your hands on a tree and just sit there for a bit and connect. This is the way that shamans do it is they 
 
are constantly connected to anemone. Anemone is the soul of the planet. And this is a great way to start recultivating and start recognizing your seniority is stop the world. And that’s why I said that quote earlier about I’ve got to stop my world because we generally think stopping our world is only about, OK, I got to stop my thinking. Well, yeah, that’s part of it. 
 
But you can’t do that if you’ve got a thousand media messages coming at you all day long. And even when you’re scrolling, dopamine hits in the brain and all these kinds of things. And candidly, Elon Musk and Zuckerberg don’t give a shit about you. Why? Because they’re laughing and crying all the way to the bank. Because people who buy into all that, and I’ve been there before, I’m not saying that I wouldn’t go back to some of that. I’m not saying that. 
 
But I’m just saying that toxicity is far deeper than what we can see. I was talking to another friend yesterday and she has a younger son and she was saying that her son, I believe is 14 now and all he wants to do is stay on the computer. And she goes, he’s very, very, very lonely. But at the same time, all that he chooses to do is isolate himself on social media. And this is why we’re having the higher levels of depression and anxiety with teenagers. 
 
So what I request you do is take a step back, observe how many external things control you. And again, the simple thing here, stop your social media for 30 days. As a matter of fact, I challenge you, stop your news cycle, stop your social media for 30 days. Tell people you don’t want to hear about it. Tell them not to bring things to you. Tell them not to send you videos. If they’re texting, just shut them all off for 30 days. 
 
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and go inside. Now you might say, well, Jim, that’s not practical. I have a job and I work corporate and I’ve got kids and all these kinds of things. It’s a whole different audio or episode that I can do. Very practical. Many years ago, I told Don Javier that I wanted to go to a 12 day Vipin Sana meditation. It’s a Buddhist meditation. All you do is meditate all day long for 12 days. And he said, why do you need to go to a center? 
 
And my first thought was, well, I don’t know. mean, that’s where they do. And he goes, why don’t you call upon your, this is exactly what he said. Why don’t you call upon your seniority and your own personal power and do the meditation for yourself inside your home for 12 days. Think about that. Now you might have kids. Okay. Well, let’s, you know, I understand that, you know, you’ve got to take care of your kids, but what everyone has is this. 
 
All right, we all have it. And if you think you don’t have it, it’s because you’ve got your life organized in a way by choice that you don’t have it. You have five minutes. You have five minutes, few times a day to just sit and go silent. To just sit and are you ready? Be. We become human doings, not human beings, but we are truly first human beings. 
 
So take that quiet time and make a practice of it. Set your phone and do it every day at the same time. So you start creating a habit, but create that habit of even a little time, a little time, five minutes, we’ll start making a difference in your life. I remember Don Hubbard, you’re talking to me one time and he was saying, do you know why human beings blink? But I said, sure, people blink because when you blink, literally you moisten and moisten the eyeballs. 
 
And it keeps your eyeballs moist. And he goes, yeah, biologically. But do you know why people blink like cosmically? And of course, I’m like, duh, no, I don’t. And he said, humans blink because in that literal nano nanosecond, when you blink, your eyelids close. And when you are eyelids close in that moment, you are looking into the darkness of black. 
 
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matter. Wow. When he told me that I’m like, wow. So I said, Don, what you’re really telling me is when I’m blinking my eyes. Now it happened so quickly autonomically that I’m not even conscious that I’m doing it. But when I blink and my eyelids are closed for that, what is it? One one hundredth of a second. You’re telling me that I without having the awareness I’m connecting with universal and divine mind. And he said, absolutely. 
 
So that’s why I’m telling you five minutes is a big deal. Our ego says that’s not a big deal, but just sitting and closing your eyes for five minutes is complete connection because the external world, you probably have forgotten a lot of yourself and lost a lot of yourself because you’re living in the external world. The money, the health, the jobs, the relationships, run, run, run, soccer practice, violin lessons, new home, travel, this, that business speaking. 
 
Whatever it is that you’re doing, we tend to lose ourself in the activity. And when I say lose ourself, it’s that contact with the divine. And that’s where we find the peace. That’s where we find the wisdom and the guidance. That is when we connect with the seniority of us. Now I’m going to tell you black and white. So if you feel like your life is a merry-go-round, many of us, what we try to do is like the Titanic. Many of us, I’ve been there. 
 
When the Titanic is going down, many of us are running around rearranging the furniture, thinking by rearranging the furniture, we’re going to stop the ship from sinking. That ain’t going to happen. many of us, what we try to do is when we’re on the hamster wheel of the merry-go-round, we try to reorganize what we’re doing on the hamster wheel. But all we’re doing is we’re reorganizing the same activity, but we’re still on the hamster wheel. Same thing. Ship’s going down. You can reorganize furniture all day long. 
 
but it doesn’t stop the Titanic from going down. Same thing in your own life. Another question for you is who, I’m going to say this slowly, who would you be without the constant external world influence and bombardment of you? Again, who would you be without the constant external influence and bombardment of you? Sit with that question. 
 
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Because I think you’re going to find some things you didn’t expect when you really explore. Who would I be if I didn’t let the world own me? If I don’t let the world in my head like I do. And I went into that silence because notice, notice how you feel when you go into that five minutes of silence and you might even do it for one minute or three minutes or maybe you’re a seasoned air quote meditator. Notice how you feel more alive when you’re in that state as opposed to I’ve got to be doing things all the time. 
 
and I gotta be taking this information and I gotta be doing all these different kinds of things. Just notice the difference in feelings. Because once you start reclaiming your power from the external world, for the third or fourth time I’m gonna say it, now we start moving back into our seniority. So, Shaman’s Tip, if you want 2026 to be an amazing 2026 for you, and by the way, don’t get into it. 
 
but the external world is getting more unstable and more chaotic in case you haven’t noticed. Well, guess what? Stay out of the external world, so to speak, in your head and start living in the internal world of the silence. Because when you’re living in the external world, you’ve given all, and I mean all of your seniority away. And your seniority is the power that you have brought to you, with you to this planet from 
 
Many, many, is Don Ravier, which say a Google amount of lifetimes. You lose all that. It’s like sealed away in a vault. So your transformational takeaway this episode. Get quiet. out for 30 days and place the external influences and live in the peace without the external world and the social media in particular and news. At the very least, take that out of your life and you will find yourself. 
 
feeling a lot better, more clarity, more answers coming to you. And you’ll also find more wellbeing in that place. This is not the episode that I’m going to go into it, but Don Hovier and I were talking when I was healing in 2020. And he said, when people even do the application, meaning the action of meditating, what happens is the body goes into immediate healing mode. That is the divine intelligence within all of us. All right, guys. 
 
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Hopefully you found some value here. you did, please share this episode with your friends and family. I know it’s very easy to listen to episodes and say, I resonate, I get it, but we don’t take action on it. I’m challenging you again, third time. I’m reluctant to use that word challenge, but I’m challenging you. Get rid of the social media, take the apps off your phone, all that for 30 days and see how much better you feel. Okay, thanks for listening. I’ll catch you over on another episode. Bye bye.