You’re listening to the Transform Your Life from the Inside Out podcast. This is another episode in the Conversations with a Sorcerer series, and it’s titled Spiritual Gurus and the Abuse of Power. This is from a conversation that I had with Don Xavier back on June the 17th of 2020. And Don Xavier and people in the room, we were talking about healers and notable personalities, many people you might even follow them. 
 
And in this episode, want to talk about spiritual gurus and charlatans and what to be careful for and look for when you’re following people. So if you follow people out there in the spiritual space, 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. So as I said in the introduction, this episode is titled Spiritual Gurus and the Abuse of Power. And this is another conversation of Don Xavier. And the whole point of this episode is to share the thought that it’s important to be careful who you learn from. 
 
And the reason why, something I learned many years ago, there was a mentor of Don Xavier’s talking to me about Don Xavier, but it wasn’t about Don Xavier, but it was kind of basically an illustration or a metaphor. Be careful who you follow. And the reason why is every limitation of the person you follow becomes your limitation. Meaning if you follow somebody hook, line and sinker, 
 
And whatever limitations they bring to you, you’re subject to those limitations. I see a lot of this online. I don’t say a lot about it. I’m not going to mention any names. It’s not my place. But I see people, and this is going to sound a bit arrogant. I see people online that are talking about spiritual content and they have no idea what they’re talking about. 
 
and what they’re doing is actually hurting people and misleading people. Many years ago, good friend of mine, he used to be extremely big online and I used to coach him as well. And I had the kind of relationship with him where I could say this to him and I did. I said, you know, you’re the blind leading the blinder. When I said that, he started listening, but he knew exactly what I meant. Because many times I’d be coaching him on something spiritually. 
 
then I would watch him turn around and coach other people on it, not even having integrated that into his own life. And I do want to point out, because I do not want to come across as arrogant, and I’ll talk about that in this episode, everyone’s on their own path. Many of us are heading the same direction. Other people are heading different directions. But if you’re on the planet, including me, if you’re on the planet, you’re here to learn still. And you’re here because there still more things to learn. 
 
Now back to this conversation of Don Xavier, this was at a family gathering and family gathering means my immediate family, plus people that work at Don Xavier. And there was somebody talking about Ayurvedic, Ayurvedic healing. And they were seeing a particular healer. And Don Xavier was talking about, well, yes, that healer uses herbs and different things. But then that conversation shifted from Ayurveda to notable personalities online. 
 
And I want to be careful because Don Xavier is not a person to throw other people under the bus in any way. As a matter of fact, I’ve only seen him endorse people in terms of everyone’s on their own path. You’ve got to walk your path no matter who it might be, whether it be Eckhart Tolle or he’s walking his path or anyone. And by the way, Eckhart Tolle was not mentioned in this conversation, but I use that as an example. So what I’m not going to do is I’m not going to share names. 
 
but you may be able to figure out perhaps who I’m talking about by just a couple of references or things that I might say. But again, I’m not gonna share names because what these people are doing, I think their intention is to help people, yet many times people wanna help people for their own gaining. And that’s kind of the purpose of this episode. So I wanna go back 10 years ago before I even start sharing what was said in this conversation. 
 
And I remember one time I was with Don Xavier and he was even saying the current Dalai Lama. And he said, the current Dalai Lama is not living in the way that former Dalai Lamas have lived before. Now, I don’t recall a whole lot about this conversation because it was probably minimum 10 years ago, probably 15 years ago. But I think what he was inferring is that the ancient ways are getting lost. 
 
meaning the really ancient and profoundly energetic spiritual ways are getting lost with the evolution of the world and things that people get into. And that could have been what he was talking about. But again, he did say nothing derogatory, but he did say this Dalai Lama is not living in the ancient ways that past Dalai Lamas have lived before. So I’ll just leave that right there for now. So 
 
In this conversation, when we talking about a well-known personality, a New York Times bestselling spiritual author, and Don Xavier said, quote, he is an M.D., meaning a medical doctor. And he said he got all of his information and he started talking about Toltequity. And he started talking about a particular number of agreements. Now, Toltec, I am Toltec. 
 
What that means is I identify as Toltec, but what that means is that is my spiritual lineage, meaning the ancient ways of the Toltec people. And I could do a whole episode on the Toltecs. I won’t right now. But also another author who I’m not referring to in this episode was Carlos Castaneda, who brought the teachings of Don Juan. He was not the actual student of Don Juan, though he penned the stories. But the role that he played was that he brought the Toltec-witty. 
 
 
meaning the Toltec teachings to the masses. Now, before I continue on the story, Gary Zhukov had mentioned a friend of his to me, his name, and by the way, I’m mentioning his name because I think he has really good material, in my opinion, Alberto Villaloto. Some people will say he’s a shaman. I personally, in my opinion, he’s not a shaman. He’s a person who studied with shamans. By the way, I’m not a shaman. I’ve never claimed to be a shaman. 
 
I simply apprentice with a shaman and I’ll leave that there for now. But like Alberto, for example, I’ve listened to a lot of his content and personally, I find from my many years working with a shaman, it’s very solid material. So I’m not taking anything away from Alberto whatsoever. As a matter of fact, I endorse his work. My point is, is we have to be careful. The bigger point, we have to be careful who we listen to. 
 
and who we learn from because there are a lot of people out there, especially in the spiritual space. They’re wrapped up in spiritual clothing, a cloak, so to speak, metaphorically speaking, and they’re talking about spiritual things. But their bigger objective is what can they gain from it? Now back to Alberto and even Gary Zukov. Gary Zukov is a spiritual teacher, a very good friend of mine. I love Gary, an amazing, amazing man. And Gary and I were chatting one time. 
 
how we say the same things, but we say it differently and we observe things, but we observe it differently. And Gary’s comment was, well, you learn from your teacher and I learned from my teacher. And it doesn’t mean that either is wrong. And we’re generally saying the same things just in a different way. I do want to, I do want to reinforce or accentuate. That’s not the point of this episode because I want to talk about some people that maybe charlatans 
 
leading a lot of other people, but yet they’re doing it for their own energetic reasons. And then I want to talk about also what happens when we do that, if any of us, including me, if I did that, what would be the energetic ramifications of that? So let’s go back to we’re talking about the agreements and out in culture right now, there’s a famous book out there, but out in culture, people think there are four agreements. 
 
And I said in this conversation, Don, you said there are not four agreements. There are 13 agreements. Is that correct? And he said, absolutely. There are not just four agreements. There are 13 agreements. And then he went on to say, and I’ll just quote, yes, and that’s fine. These people are making some money and they’re bringing some good information to people. And here’s where I’ll go deeper in the episode, but he says sooner or later, they pay the consequences. 
 
they get ill or things don’t work for them or whatever, they get distorted and many times they start getting dysfunctional. And on that comment, I want to get back something Don Xavier said to me, it’s just a simple phrase that I live by. I love the phrase. It’s also physics, but the phrase is everything falls by its own weight. Everything falls by its own weight. 
 
So whether that be a famous author that’s a charlatan, and I can think of several people that claim to air quote, talk to the dead. And these people are literally just taking people for their money. It’s kind of like, Odom Brown in the 1990s movie ghost, where she was taking people’s money and she literally wasn’t using a gift that she allegedly had. But what I’m sharing here, 
 
is that many people, especially in this day and age, will say, yes, I can talk to the dead. I can do this. I can do that. And they really can’t. And they’re charlatans, but they’re taking people’s money. And that’s what I mean by they will eventually energetically fall by their own weight. I do want to segue here for a second and say, because I will distinguish this in our time together, but a spiritual healer 
 
For example, like Don Xavier, which I’ll talk about in a moment, is allowed to charge a very little amount of money. I mean, literally a few bucks. But other people are charging 10, 20, $30,000 and they say they can do what he can do, but they can’t. And they tell you they’re healers. and I’ll heal you from cancer. I’ll heal you from this and heal you from that. But they’re not true healers. Or if they are a true healer, 
 
they’re damaging their self energetically really badly by charging for something they’re not allowed to charge for. I do want to point out when it comes to things like information and coaching, we can charge for that, but we have to be very careful when we’re talking about spiritual matters and spiritual things, we need to be very careful about what we’re charging money for. In creating this episode last night when I sat down to start thinking about what I’m going to do for this week, 
 
I spent a few hours working on this episode and each episode really is very time consuming. The conversation with the sorcerer series. All these episodes take me anywhere from two to five hours to create a single 30 minute episode. Why? Because I’ve got to curate the content meaning from what’s already been shared with me and then I’ve got to distinguish between what I can share, what will make sense, what I’m allowed to share and then put it in a cogent way that you can understand. So last night I was thinking, hmm. 
 
I hope I’ve not bitten off more than I can chew with this particular episode. But the point is, Don Xavier went on to say, you cannot manipulate spirit. And those who manipulate spirit, they’re going to pay. And he said, if they’re taking advantage of other people, they’re going to be in trouble energetically. And he said, quote, if I were taking advantage of other people, I would be dead by now. 
 
I’d be punished by my own consequences. And that’s what I mean. Everything falls by its own weight. Even that simple phrase, everything falls by its own weight. I love that because it has so many lifetime applications. When somebody steals and then many times we want to get back at them, we want to be vindictive or we want to call them out or we want something to happen to them. We don’t have to police them. They’re going to be captured and fall by their own weight in some way. 
 
And it might not even be a tangible visceral weight, maybe something you can’t observe tangibly, but energetically they make it sick. They make it cancer. Something might happen to them as a result of creating a scenario while they’re falling by their own weight. I want to take a second and share something here and that I had somebody that watches the podcast on YouTube. 
 
And they reached out to me and they were almost chastising me to some degree and criticizing me. And they were saying, Jim, you shouldn’t mention Don Xavier is your brother-in-law and a shaman. You should not mention that. And I do it because we have new people joining all the time and millions of downloads, which I’m grateful for. But I’m doing it because I want to be clear that learning and teachings and wisdom that have been brought to me that would not have been mine otherwise. 
 
I’m not the originator of that particular wisdom that I’m sharing here. It comes from somewhere else. And this person was basically chastising me, saying that everything I share, like conversations from a sorcerer, I should just claim it as my own and then just embody it and then share it with you guys as if it was my own. I refused to do that. There’s no way I would do that. And the reason why is that’s not my energy. 
 
That’s almost like stealing. I can be a conduit for the energy. I can share the energy, but I am not going to violate what are called codes and take someone’s knowing, their wisdom, their sharing, and claim it as my own. By the way, in the world we live in, many people do that. And that’s their dance. That’s their deal. That’s not the way that I choose to manage myself. In this conversation, Don Xavier went on to say, 
 
very profound sentence, you cannot lie to that level of divinity, meaning people that are using other people’s profound wisdom and saying, this is mine, trying to build themselves up, they’re lying. And Don Xavier’s point was about many of these people, which I’ll talk about some in a moment, by name, that may be very spiritual authors. 
 
You cannot lie to spirit. And Don Xavier went on to say, you can’t even hide if you make a bunker, you know, underground bunker. You cannot hide. And there are so many people that think, I can take this information, which I’m getting to in this episode. I can take this information that I learned and that I can say it’s my information and I can share with everyone else. 
 
And I can charge a lot of money and make a lot of money off from this profound ancient healing wisdom. But yet I’m going to make all this money off from it. That’s lying to spirit. And we cannot do that because there are consequences to that. Now, this person that I was talking about earlier, he was an M.D. And I asked Don Xavier if this person was also a shaman. I mean, I don’t have the personal power to see that, but I figured that he wasn’t. 
 
And Don Xavier said, no, he was not a shaman. Even though he calls himself a shaman, he’s not a shaman. Now, also in this conversation, Don Xavier went on to say, you know what? Everyone does what they do for the reasons and the ways that they do it. But everyone has ramifications, energetic ramifications of what they do. And I want to recount the story here. I’ve told it on the podcast before. 
 
There’s a very famous spiritual author that I was literally listening to before I even met Don Xavier. And this spiritual author constantly mentioned the teachings of Don Juan by Carlos Castaneda. So I knew about Don Juan Matus from this particular very famous spiritual author. Now, what I didn’t know is that I would go on to meet Don Juan Matus’s actual apprentice, which is my brother-in-law, Don Xavier. And 
 
When I first heard that, I candidly didn’t really believe it. I was very skeptical about it. And I’ve come to know over the years that is the truth. But what I’m sharing here is this famous author, very famous, and I’m grateful for this author because I’ve learned a lot. I have a lot of respect and a lot of reverence. But this author, when he found out that my brother-in-law was the actual apprentice of Don Juan Matus in the books, 
 
He said to me, Jim, I will go anywhere, anytime, any place. You just tell me when I will be there at any place on this planet to meet your brother-in-law. So I went to Don Xavier and this was back in the nineties. And I said, Hey, this guy wants to meet you, this famous author. And he goes, well, I don’t know. And I said, what are you? And I was really green and naive spiritually. And I said, what do you mean? You don’t know. 
 
I mean, you’re working as a shaman again. You’ve been led back on the path again. You’re working as a healer and a shaman. This guy is huge. He can get you a lot of exposure. And Don Xavier said, I don’t know. He goes, let me ask. And what he meant was, is he wanted to ask his guides. So later he came back and he goes, well, thank you for offering this and tell that person thank you, but no. 
 
I don’t want to meet with him. And I back then I’m like, what are you talking about, dude? You don’t want to meet with this guy. didn’t say it like that, but you don’t want to meet with this guy who could be huge for you and help you help more people. And he said, no, the only reason this guy wants to meet with me is because he wants to collect information. He wants to collect more material. 
 
Don Hovier went on to say, he goes, I know that a lot of people have benefited from it and this guy’s made a lot of books, but now this guy’s coming to spiritual maturity, so to speak, as in my words, not Don Hovier’s, and he wants to clean his karma. And this famous author, again, who I have a lot of reverence and a lot of respect for, this famous author walked out on a stage having given away everything, even his shoes, and he came out barefoot. 
 
And I wasn’t there personally. I just saw it on, I don’t know, somewhere, YouTube, whatever. And Don Xavier said he was thinking that he was going to give everything away and that was going to clean his karma. But it just doesn’t work that way. And Don Xavier wanted to say is you cannot be fooling and fooling other people because sooner or later that energy is going to come hit you right. 
 
in the back. Now, as I share that, I don’t want to speak of this author that I’m talking about anymore, but he had some pretty challenging energy come and hit him in the back. Were they related? I don’t know. I’m not going to postulate on that. I’m not going to comment on that, but he had something happen to him health wise that this day and age, he could have lived a decade and a half, two decades longer. 
 
So are they related? I don’t know. Don Xavier went on to say, and he said, this is hard for a lot of people to understand. And what he was referring to is the energetic ramifications of taking what’s not yours energetically or spiritually. And Don Xavier went on to say, I am a simple man. I have to be humble no matter what, no matter what happens. 
 
nothing will change me. And he goes, I’m just going to go on being myself and doing what I need to do. And he wanted to say something, which I have found to be true with him. He goes, when people are called spiritually, like I am to do what I do, he helps energetically with planetary healing. When people come to him and they’re sick, he helps with healing and he helps people that want to grow and evolve spiritually. And he said something that 
 
maybe a lot of you haven’t thought about, but he said, when you’re in my position and someone like me, it’s a hard call to make whether or not you want to be in this position or not, because I can help everyone else, but I can’t help myself. Now, me speaking to you, listening to the podcast, I’ve seen that many years. He can help many people and he does. mean, I’ve seen people in stage four cancer go into remission. 
 
I’ve seen things that you would call a miracle literally happen with people. And I’ve seen it over and over and over and over, including my own life. But the trade off is that he can help everyone else, but he can’t help himself. So don’t have your one on the say people start getting benefit when they truly connect to source. So ponder that. 
 
people get benefit when they truly connect to source. And you know, I think of another story here. There was a person that used to work with him for many years and I’ve known her since the nineties. And she and her husband used to be formerly Hare Krishnas, very spiritual, temples, Buddhism, all these kinds of things. And they wanted to introduce Don Xavier to one of the most well-known gurus in the world right now. They know there’s a guru. 
And Don Xavier said no. And he usually plays it down. He’s like, I’m a hermit. No, that’s, that’s thank you, but, no. And he talks about the distortion that these people experience in their own life when they’re out there preaching all the spirituality and they’re doing it for their own profit. And that’s something that’s always concerned me about the podcast is because I don’t charge for the podcast. 
 
at least the majority of it, anything spiritual I know that I would do if I were in that genre, then I wouldn’t charge anything, but I’m just not that person. I’m not a shaman. So it’s okay for me to do what I do, but I want to share with you, I’ve always been mindful of being very respectful of the energies that come to me, even things in dream time or things that come. I’ve always been very respectful because I do not want to abuse any spiritual gifts or any energy. 
 
because I don’t want, even though I could profit a great deal from it financially, I don’t want the energetic ramifications of that. Specifically, I do not choose, desire, or want to be physically ill. So I stay out of it. I share what I share here on the podcast in hopes of getting you guys to think, to open up a little bit. And that’s why I do episodes like this. But in this episode, what I want you to start thinking about 
 
is the amount of people who abuse their power under the auspice of, I’m the spiritual whatever mumbo jumbo, I’m all these kind of things. You know, I know somebody on YouTube that has multiple seven figures and followers. This person’s probably in their 30s. I’ve met the person before, and when I met them, I was immediately repelled by their energy. 
 
And I’ve been invited to do things with this person and I’ve declined. And I knew this person was a spiritual charlatan. I could just sense it. Don Xavier and I talked about it. It was like, I hope I’m never invited to do anything with that person because I wouldn’t do it. I wouldn’t go. And what I’m sharing with you in this episode is where I started. Be careful who you listen to and who you follow. 
 
I don’t care how famous they are because every limitation they have, they bring those limitations to you. And what we have to do is we have to be wise and all of us have our own internal guidance. You know, when I mentioned the word guru, Don Xavier has never ever, and he actually negates, refuses and ignores 
 
any kind of inference or reference to him being anything other than just an ordinary normal guy. But he’s always said, and I say this to you listening, we all need guidance. I mean, I get my guidance from Don Xavier and through him, but also the energetic doorways that he opens for me. And I’m always asking him that I hear this correctly, meaning from spirit, that I get this correctly. Do I have this right? Do I have this in the right order? Am I hearing? Am I seeing the right things? 
 
And he’ll sometimes say, well, yeah, you you’ve got this right, but you got this in the wrong order. Let’s readjust it. Let’s move this here. Look at it this way. You didn’t see it this way or that way. My whole point in this episode and with this episode is be careful for the malaligned spiritual energies out there. And it’s OK that all of us are learning our lessons and doing our things. But what I really want to caution you about 
 
is be careful for people. When I’ve seen this, people saying things like, you pay me $10,000 and I will help you heal from whatever it is you have. You pay me, and I’ve seen people do this, you pay me $20,000 to come to my five day retreat and you will leave spiritually enlightened and excuse me, all this fricking bullshit that people do for money. Beware. 
 
And Don Xavier has always said to me, because in 28 years and all the times of asking for healing and help and guidance and wisdom and insight, not one time, and I am not exaggerating and I would take a polygraph to prove it, even if they were, I don’t think they do. think they’re not all the way accurate. He’s never asked me for a single penny. He’s never sent it at a single penny. He’s not insinuated a single penny. Never. 
 
Has he ever, ever, ever, ever asked me for so much as a single penny, but he’s always helping. So if you find people telling you to grow spiritually, they have to pay you a lot of money. Be careful. I do want to draw a distinction so I can be fair to everyone and hopefully I say this correctly. Is there are many people that do spiritual programs and they charge for those. That’s fine. That’s totally fine. 
 
No problem energetically with that. But if somebody comes to you and tells you they can help you actually speak to your dead mother or they can help you heal or all these kind of things, but you’ve got to pay them loads of money. That’s what I’m trying to convey right there because a lot of people do part. I’ve seen it not with anybody I know personally, but people I know in the peripheral people that will pay $10,000 to go sit with some guru. I’ve seen it. 
 
If that is at your doorstep, turn around and walk away because these people are for the most part enriching themselves and literally taking from you. You know, one of the most famous gurus of all times, there’s even a documentary about him on Netflix somewhere. I’ve seen part of it. I didn’t watch all of it. This guy back in the seventies, I think he had like a hundred Rolls Royces and all this kind of stuff. 
 
A lot of people air quote worship this guru and Don Xavier and I were chatting about him and Don Xavier is like the guys at Charleston. But yet a lot of people fall into that energy where they want to serve the guru. So the guru takes their money and actually they’re giving up all their power to the guru. Now in this episode, hopefully I’ve made sense. I mean, that’s, that’s why I said earlier, hopefully I didn’t bite off more than I can chew. 
 
And I accurately conveyed what I wanted to convey to you is just be mindful of what people are charging you for. Okay. Because if somebody’s telling you again, they’re going to charge you $10,000 to heal you from something or 20,000. I’m going to give you this spiritual journey or awakening for $25,000. And yes, people do that. You might not be aware of that, but I know I’ve heard stories, I’ve talked to people. That’s what people try to charge. 
 
If that happens to you, turn around and go the other direction. Okay, so the point of this episode is beware of the fake guru. Something I was going to say a little earlier is be your own guru. But all of us, we need guidance. I mean, I know I need guidance. I get stuck in my blind spots or things I can’t see. I’ll pay people to coach me. That’s not, I don’t have problem with that. I’ll definitely pay people to coach me. Don Xavier air quote coaches me, never ask for a penny. 
 
He doesn’t do it formally. I mean, he’s family. I just talk to him when I see him or I call him. But I always make sure that I return the energy. You’ve heard me say that before is that we’ve got to return the I need. And if I only did one episode ever again, a podcast, and I’m like, OK, I’m going to do one episode that people would get. That would be I need a Y and I. You get what you give. You’ve got to give more life to get more. Just be discerning of who you are giving to. 
 
Before we get to the transformational takeaway, I want to dive a little deeper in what we now started called the secret podcast. And I want to talk a little bit more about agreements and I want to talk about 13 agreements. want to talk about the distinction between healers who can charge and cannot. And I want to talk about authenticity. So to go there, what you want to do is go to JimForton.com slash insiders and I’ll add more content to this particular episode. Your transformational takeaway from this episode I’ve alluded to four or five times. 
 
Be wise, be mindful about who you follow. There are many charlatans out there and they’re literally sucking your energy and your money. They’re benefiting and you lose. So be mindful of the charlatans out in the world. Thanks for listening and I’ll catch you over on another episode. Bye bye.