You’re listening to the Transform Your Life from the Inside Out podcast. This is a throwback episode, episode number 116, which was titled, “Setting Up an Altar and Morning Rituals and Intentions.” Most of us don’t really look at our homes as what I call a temple, a sacred space, a sanctuary. My entire home, I’m even careful about who comes into my home, but my entire home, for me, is my sanctuary.

It’s the sanctuary for this container that I call Jim Fortin. And in the sanctuary, my entire house, or a great deal of it, has altars in it. And altars are a physical representation of a space where I want to sit and connect with Divine, Divine Mind, Divine Beings, whatever it might be for me. But I have altars in my house and I have a main altar as well in my… I’m going to call it a meditation room for lack of better words right now, but I have a meditation room.

And I have a predominant altar in there that I’ve had now for 30 years. And on my altar, I have some of my most sacred spiritual items. So in this episode, I talk about why we should set up an altar, the power of an altar, and how we can start using altars to create what it is we want in life. Specifically, you’re listening because you want to be doing have more life.

So let an altar help you create what you want. Enjoy the episode. 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 ra-ra 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, so my approach, what I’d mentioned shamanism and spirituality, I mean spirituality can be many different things. However, you know that, you know, if you’ve listened for any amount of time, you know that my brother-in-law is a shaman, and shamans work with the elements.

You know, I’ve said before, but shamans can be traced back by anthropologists over 70,000 years, and they can be traced back to Siberia, ancient Siberia. And shaman technically means one who can see in the dark. Now, in shamanism, shamans, actually, and by the way, there are elements of shamanism that runs through all the major religions.

But shamans work with the elements. And my brother-in-law, Don Xavier, is also a sorcerer and a Babalao and amongst other things. But shamans work with earth. They work with wind, earth, wind, fire, water. They work with the elements.

And this is something that I’ve done for 25 years of my life. And I can make this very complex and that’s not necessary because I don’t think any of you for the most part are apprenticing with shamans or you need anything elaborate or fancy. But the reason I’m going to do this is to show you a way to consolidate your energetic power as a being and the way to let’s put it this way, to cast your power and to make it even more powerful.

And I’ll give you some real life examples. And I don’t think any of these are gonna be any surprise to any of you for the most part, but I just wanna share with you about how I do it and why I do it. And I’m also gonna make this very simple for you.

So the first question might be, and you might be thinking as well, why would I want an altar? Let’s go there for a moment. An altar can be anything. I mean, I have seen the whole gamut of extraordinary, extraordinary altars to things that are very simple.

I mean, quite literally boulders that, you know, out in nature, and I’ve been, you know, to Indigenous countries where people might have an altar outside, that is literally a flat boulder, and they use that as their altar space. But why would you want an altar? Let me put it that way first. And the reason that I have an altar, and just follow along with me here, okay?

But the reason that I have an altar, and I have many as a matter of fact, I have an entire room in my house, even though it’s called the healing room. It’s an altar room. It probably has, wanna say probably, at least has 200 different spiritual artifacts in it. And I have altar tables and shelves and everything in this room.

It’s a sacred space for me, I do not wear shoes in there, no one, even friends, family, no one is allowed in there except myself and my partner. And I remember a friend of mine one time, this was a long time ago that I did allow her in. Honestly, I just, I was guided to, it would be okay to let her in.

I don’t go in there with shoes and she didn’t have any shoes on and she goes, wow, the energy in here feels like when I is in Machu Picchu. She was also sensitive to energy, but I use that space to commune, to commune with the Divine, to commune with spirit.

And I also understand that all of you, you might not have the space, you might not have an entire room. So I wanna talk about just carving out a little space in your home, whether it be a table somewhere, a corner table or something, but to make that table your altar. And I’m gonna tell you in just a bit what I have on my altar, but I just wanna share a little bit about maybe how you can use this space to more powerfully cast your intentions to cast your will upon the universe.

Now, the reason, that’s why I have one, but the reason also is for Divine wisdom. As Divine wisdom many times as I’ll share in just a bit comes through symbols and comes through different tools, different divination tools. I have many, many tools, which I’ll tell you about in just a minute.

Briefly, I’ll just tell you what I have in my healing room. But the spiritual wisdom can come through tools and through guidance. And I have all these tools and, you know, these tools for guidance in my healing room. I do wanna point out that I spend, I start every morning in my healing room, and again, I’m only speaking for me, okay?

This doesn’t mean you have to do this, obviously. I start every morning in my healing room, and I finish every night in my healing room. And I sit in front of my altar, my main altar, which I have many, but I sit in front of my main altar, and you can do the same with whatever you set up for you, but you can do rituals because you probably are going to know also that rituals you’ll find in all the major religions, but you can do rituals for money or love or health or courage.

Technically anything that you do over and over again in a prescribed order is a ritual and you can imbue those rituals with power when you do them in a sacred space. Do you have to be in a sacred space? No, but what I’ve noticed for a lot of people, I think having that sacred space also helps them just literally helps them slow down, disconnect from the external world, and helps them connect with their internal world.

I don’t watch a lot of TV, but I remember watching an episode the last season of Oprah Winfrey and she is showing her apartment. And she had a table in there, which was, I don’t know if she calls it that, but it was an altar. And she said, “Every morning, I stop by here.”

And I remember to some degree, it had like a candle on it. It had maybe some meditation, like some Tibetan meditation bells. It had some divination cards, which I use a couple of different sets, I’ll tell you about, but there were different things that she had on this table.

And I recognized it all right away. And a lot of people are like, well, that’s just a table of stuff. But more than anything, what that table was for her was a way to connect with herself internally, a way for her to connect with the Divine. And like I said, she said that, you know what? Every day I start my day here.

It can be maybe one minute or it can be five minutes. It can be longer, it can be 20, just depending on what I have that day. But I make sure that I start here every day. Now, on my altar, as I said, I have an entire room.

And these are pieces that I’ve collected from all over the world on my sacred journeys. With my brother-in-law, Don Xavier, I’ve mentioned on other episodes, every spring equinox, which we don’t know anymore, but every spring equinox, we used to go to what’s called the power spot on the planet.

The planet is an energetic grid and these power spots connect. My family has been literally granted unsupervised permission to go into the king’s chamber of the Great Pyramid for two nights, and Teotihuacan, which are the pyramids outside of Mexico City, extraordinarily powerful, and they’re also energetically connected to the Great Pyramid in Egypt.

But we’ve been inside Machu Picchu in Chaco Canyon and Uluru and Haleakala and many, many power places on the planet. We’ve done ceremony there. And in all these places, I’ve actually brought artifacts back with me, whether I bought them from somewhere local or there are things that came to me while I was on those journeys.

I also I don’t wanna point out, I don’t wanna jump around here too much. But when I say things that came to me while I was on those journeys, some of you might know this, a lot of you might not. But anytime you take something like a piece of nature from somewhere, whether it be a rock or something else, you always wanna make an offering.

So if let’s say that you’re traveling somewhere and you find a rock that you wanna put in your spiritual garden, or you find thing that you want to put on your altar like it really calls to you, what you do not want to do is you do not just want to take it, you want to ask if it’s okay, listen for guidance, and then what you want to do is leave an offering for what you know, for what you’re being allowed to take.

But in my healing room, I have pieces of trees that I have brought back from them, little bitty pieces. I mean, I don’t mean big old branches, but pieces of trees. Why? Because, and I asked the tree before I took it, and many times it had already fallen off the tree, but the tree has the energy of the soil where it was actually, where it grew.

And so it’s imbued with that energy. But I have pieces of trees and flowers that became dried flowers and rocks, and I have things like this, my altar room in my healing room. And then I have sage and drums and I have a handpan which is a metal drum and I’ve got a buffalo skin drum.

I’ve got a turtle, turtle shell rattle and many other things that shamans use or people that have rooms like this might use. I have medicine cards. I have buying cards. I have Aboriginal cards that I use for divination and various other pieces, and in particular, I have, well, I’m just gonna tell you, I’m gonna come out of the woo woo closet, even though you probably have already suspected this, I have crystals.

And crystals are scientifically known to conduct energy. And once we learn how to conduct with crystals, we can use them to actually channel and to move energy. But I have some very significant crystals. I mean, some very, very, very powerful and very significant pieces.

I don’t mean little pebbles that you carry in your pocket, but I mean literally very significant hand carved crystals that have come from different places on the planet. Now, let me go back and let me bring this to you as to why you may want to create an altar. I’ve had an altar for all 25 years since I worked with Don Xavier.

And that’s my, for lack of better words to share with you. That’s my power spot. That’s where I go to. And that’s, as I said earlier, that’s where I go every morning. That’s where I finish every evening.

And I use sitting in front of my altar to cast my intention and to cast my will, which there’s an episode, just a few episodes back where I talk about intention and will. So no reason to really go into that here other than to I’ll talk about it a little bit at the end. But I have this little glass pyramid.

And there’s a reason, by the way, that the pyramids are shaped like the pyramids. You may wanna read a book. It’s called “Fingerprints of the Gods” by Graham Hancock. And you’ll find, I think there might be some inaccuracies in the book, but you’ll find it’s uncanny.

When you look at how did the Egyptians literally align the pyramids thousands of years ago, which by the way, it wasn’t the Egyptians who built pyramids, but let’s just say that it is because that’s what human history says. But how were the pyramids aligned to the cardinal points perfectly?

And actually, I think they might be one degree off, but it’s pretty fascinating when you read the sacred geometry and the geometry and the mathematics of, and you learn the mathematics of the Great Pyramid, as well as other power spots on the planet. Anyway, I used to have a glass pyramid on my main altar.

This was a lot of years ago. And in this glass pyramid, it was a glass and one part of it opened up. And what I would do is when I would cast my intent and I would cast my will, and I would say like, “I want to attract XYZ. I am attracting XYZ. I’d write it on a piece of paper and put it in that pyramid, already knowing that it was already like a short-ordered, special-ordered by way of the universe.

And I remember that I had to move from the Upper East Side to the Upper West Side, and I’ll keep the story very short, but I pulled out a piece of paper, and I said, “I wanna live on the Upper West Side of New York City on 72nd Street. I want my own bedroom, my own bathroom. I want a roommate that is spiritual.

I want a roommate that likes dogs and I want my rent to be the same what it is now.” Okay, I’m going to dispense with the rest of the story because there’s some more to the story but for the sake of brevity I’m going to dispense. Anyway, two weeks later I was walking on the Upper West Side and I said to myself, “You know what, 72nd Street, which really if you’ve ever been to New York or you know New York, it’s a very busy intersection at 72nd and Broadway.”

I said, nope, I changed my mind. I want to live on 73rd. And well, I said Broadway, but Amsterdam is the closest street. It’s only about a hundred yards. But basically I said I want to live on 73rd street, same block, they’re about the same block.

I went home, took out my piece of paper, scratched out 72nd and put 73rd. Long story, very short. I went to a roommate service, which is what people use back then. They said they didn’t have anything. When I got home, the light on my answering machine back when we used answering machines was blinking.

They said, “Hey, Jim, five minutes after you walked out we’re normally don’t do this because you know what, it’s not our job to call you. But five minutes after you walked out, somebody walked in who has seemingly exactly what you’re looking for.” And I didn’t mention the spiritual part and stuff like that. I just said that I had a dog, my rent, requirements, requirements, etc.

I called the guy. I was the first person to call him. He interviewed me. He interviewed other people. I was the one that he invited to move in.

Now, what I want to point out is that I had my own bathroom, which is a big deal. It is. If you live in New York City and anybody who knows there, if you’re renting, you know that. I had my own bathroom. I had my own bedroom.

I asked him, I said, “Why did you pick me?” And he goes, and he goes, “Because he seemed like a nice guy and I really liked your dog. I had a black lab at the time.” So he liked dogs. He had a book of Rumi poetry on his credenza when I walked in and he had somewhat of a spiritual bent.

And my rent was literally 78 cents more than what I was paying. Now, mind you, I don’t know the exact numbers, but I think the entire New York City Metroplex, metropolis, whatever you want to call, that has like 18 million people. There are what? I think three million people who live in Manhattan alone.

Three million, and a little two and a half mile by 12 mile, you know, granite block of Island. Okay, my address, are you ready? 170 West 73rd Street. How is it that I say I want to live on 73rd Street and within 30 days, I’m living via a roommate service on 73rd Street and all the rest of my list requirements were fulfilled.

Well, that’s the power of intention. That is the power of using your will, which I did a couple of episodes ago. And when I’m sitting at my altars, I’m literally casting my intention and I’m casting my will for what it is that I want to create in life.

So hopefully you’re starting to get that this can be, you know, this is what Oprah Winfrey did too. This is why she had this table, is she would sit down and it would be her connection to the Divine or whatever it is that you want to call it. But I also want to point out that when you sit down at your altar, you get quiet and you detach from the world.

You quite literally shift your consciousness. You move from an external world. It’s kind of like meditation and you move to an internal world. I do want to mention, and it’s kind of on topic, but I said that I have sage on my altar.

I have sage all over my house. I burn sage all the time in my house. I burn sage. I carry it when I travel because airports are literally just energetic toxicity when you walk to an airport.

Candidly, I don’t really go when I have it for a lot of years. I don’t go in the public places, but anytime I go out and about, I sage myself when I come home. Anytime anybody comes into my house, anyone. I sage when they leave with the exception of my brother-in-law, Don Xavier, because he’s actually cleaning up the energy in a different way at a higher level.

But science, you know, you can say, “Oh, that’s a bunch of hocus pocus,” but you know, the Native Americans used to sage to clean energy. And scientists have also discovered that sage can actually clear up 94% of airborne bacteria in a space and it disinfects the air. And you can Google that, and you’ll find that in some scientific literature.

But when sage is burned, it releases negative ions, which is like putting people in a positive mood. Let me share something with you here. When I sage, anytime I go out and I come back home, I sage. And what I do is, actually I sage on my side porch, but I light my sage, and literally you of an electromagnetic bubble around your body.

It’s called an aura. But I sage from the front of my body all the way around to my back, and then I switch hands and go all the way from my front, all the way around to my back. And then I do the same thing, like I cocoon myself in a bubble, then over my head and down my back and down my legs and down my feet.

And then I imagine down under the earth, but I literally sage myself thoroughly. And I imagine that a cocoon myself in a, well, a cocoon of smoke, which is the sage smoke. All altars, I have altar bowls on all of my altars, but I’m constantly making offerings.

Something you may want to look into a little more on yourself. You can find some stuff on YouTube. I can talk about it a little more here, a little later on. But I make offerings at any time that I make a request of any, I’m just going it’s gonna say this way of any being or any entity or any what we might consider Divine entity or Divine energy, I always make an offering when I request something.

Let me go off topic here. I’m just jumping around here a little bit. Is the reason that a lot of people don’t get what they want in life is because they’re takers and not givers. And even many of you listening will say, well, no, that doesn’t apply to me.

Yes, it does. And I know that because for many a year it applied to me. And now for what I do and helping people with transformation and things that I do in bringing spiritual wisdom, I’ve learned many years ago from my brother-in-law, Don Xavier, that in Native American times, and this would also be in shamanism, you never ever go to an elder ever and ask for guidance of some sort without first making an offering.

Yet so many of you, and I’m telling you this non-judgmentally, I’m telling you to serve you. Many of you will take energy from other people, but you’re not exchanging the energy. And the universe can’t exist in a vacuum. And then you wonder why you’re not pulling more things back into your life.

What you have to look at is what are you taking out of life? Life must balance. But the reason I started talking about that is because I have offering bowls and I’m constantly making offerings. Now, I don’t know your living situation.

I don’t know if this is possible for you to do this or not do this, but what I also wanna point out is whatever altar you have, whether it’s an end table, and it’s a two by two table, or it’s a full altar, or whatever, or you have it, wherever you have it, that is a sacred space.

I cannot stress that enough. That is a sacred space. And what I mean by that is that energetically yours. What you also want to do, and you can find this on YouTube, so I don’t have to really go into it, but you cleanse any items, meaning especially if you’re using any kind of crystals or rocks or any of that, you want to cleanse them first, and you can cleanse things by using sage, by setting it out under the full moon, by putting it in the freezer.

Literally, you can cleanse through freezing, but if you want to learn how to cleanse crystals, there’s a couple of ways. My brother-in-law, Don Xavier, actually does, he calls taking them back to natural, meaning he cleanses all the energy out of any human being, even touching anything that’s been carved or whatever.

But for most people that don’t have access to that is you can put things in water, put it in salt water also as a way to cleanse or put it out under a full moon and let the full moon energy also cleanse. What I wanna point out is as I just said, even when I go in my healing room, I do not wear shoes, I do not take money, I have no money in my pockets because money shifts energy and not the way that I want for my healing room.

And I do not take my phone in there. If I’m gonna listen to a meditation of some sort that might be digital, I’ll put on my AirPods and I’ll listen in, what are they called? The Apple things you put in your ears or AirPods, right? But I’ll put those on and go in there, but I leave my phone outside of the room because of the electromagnetics.

But what I wanna share with you, as I said, is I don’t set things down on my altar if they do not belong there. So I don’t know if, you know, you had a luxury maybe having a side room or an old room or whatever, or even a table somewhere, but all I wanna share is this.

Wherever you create your altar, make it your space and ask your family, please or your friends, please not to touch things on your altar because they’re things that are sacred to you. Okay, morning rituals. As I said, I go in there every morning and I finish my day every night in there.

And I’m thinking about what I wanna say here and about how far I wanna go in this. And I don’t want to go too far in this episode, but working with Don Xavier, I’ve had the grace and the fortune to be able to connect with, let’s just say, many energetic entities.

So I go in there and that’s where, I mean, I can connect anywhere at any time and I don’t have to be in that room, but I go in that room to connect because it’s quiet, it’s peace. Let me put it this way. It’s like my sanctuary. Now Oprah Winfrey, she only had a table in her apartment and it was in her living room.

And of course she probably had a 15 room apartment and you know, wherever she lived in Chicago, but it’s her space. And you can make that your space as well. So I go in there every morning and here’s how I break it up. I go in there every morning and I set my intention and I set my will for the day.

And then I go in there every night and I give thanks for my day and I give thanks for all the blessings that I’ve had that day. Now, earlier I’d mentioned also a few minutes ago that I did do an episode recently on intention and will. There’s a lot of things that I want to talk about.

I’m going to just be, I don’t script anyway, but I’m really gonna be unscripted. There’s a lot of things that I wanna talk about with you guys. And honestly this week, I just don’t wanna do it this week because we’re living in a world right now, no matter what you do, I recognized, it doesn’t matter.

No matter what you do, there’s gonna be someone that’s gonna attack you somewhere. And I’ve had some people attacking me because they’re saying I’m not doing enough for Black Lives Matter, well, what they don’t know, which I want to share with you in just a moment, is, which is a whole another episode, is that you don’t have to physically do things to support Black Lives Matter.

But then you know what, then you get into, well, all lives matter, and then no lives matter, and how come Black Lives Matter, then white lives don’t matter, and how come this, and how come that, and how come this, and how come that, and you know what, just speaking from me to you, I’m tired of the flak this week.

So I’m gonna chill out and that’s why I decided to do this episode. I’ve got some other really good stuff coming for you in the near future though. And I do wanna say that I’ve spent, I’m sure you don’t know this about me, but aside from working with a shaman for 25 years, and I don’t know how long you’ve listened to this podcast, but if you don’t recognize that I am for the goodwill and the prosperity and the abundance for every single human being on the planet, then obviously you’ve not been paying attention to the podcast or I’ve not done my job and conveyed something properly.

But I’ve spent my entire life working for human rights. In college, I was a political science major and a psychology double major, every degree in both. And after college, and by the way, I got the job through using my intention and setting my will, but after college, for a couple of years, I worked at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Center, which by the way is nonpartisan.

And I wanted to work at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Center so badly because Carter, well after he left for many years, decades now after he left the White House, all that he does is he fights for human rights. He fights for equality. And many years ago, when I used to go do things to make things happen.

I said, I wanna be part of that. I want to champion human rights around the world. And it’s also for anybody that’s like, well, the Carter Democrat, that doesn’t matter. The Carter Center is all nonpartisan.

Now, on a very important note, I wanna stay here for the record and I wanna share something. And in light of the events of what’s been happening here in the United States, I want to state for the record. And believe it or not, people have called me out and said, well, you should state for the record.

So I’m stating for the record is that I 100% denounce racism in any and all forms. I am 100% supportive of anything anti-racist. Now, did I get my verbs and did I dangle the participle or something, if somebody’s gonna criticize me for, I don’t know.

But it should be obvious that I denounce anything that takes away from the dignity of another human being. As I’ve said before, and I said, I think about three weeks ago in a podcast, we’re all equal. And I’ve said that before, every one of us are equal and we’re an earth school.

And we’re equal in the eyes of the universe and we’re all living out our karma. And by the way, that’s something that a lot of people are looking at this week is that a lot of things that are happening to a lot of people in this world are actually people living out their karma.

That is an entirely different episode, and I’m not gonna get into that right now in this particular episode. But you know what is every nation, every person, every religion, every everything, every one, every animal, everywhere on the planet is their karma.

And what I want to share with you, and then I’m going to tell you something that I’m doing to actually contribute to Black Lives Matter. But you know what? Is honor and love other people? Honor and love, because you know what?

We generally, we don’t, most people don’t see people as human beings. They see them as social structures, as colors, or nationalities, or religions. And you know what, many times when we do that, we’re not actually honoring that person where we’re actually, or we’re not, whatever we’re doing to that person, we’re actually responding to our interpretation of that person, a whole ‘nother podcast as well.

But here’s what I wanna point out, is I’m doing a $5,000 total contribution match, meaning I will match up to $5,000 in contributions. And I reached out to some of my students that are African American and I asked them, they’re very, I mean, I’m like, guys, help me please tell me what would be a reputable organization that I could contribute to and I could match.

And they gave me several organizations, but I found one that I liked mainly because they’re about eradicating systemic racism. Again, I’m just using these words, I read it on their website and I went through the website and I’m like, I like these guys and I like what they’re doing.

But it’s the NAACP LDF, which is the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. Their domain is NAACPLDF.org. Now, the reason I’m telling you that is not everyone’s gonna agree with what’s going on in the world, the chaotic energy. Not everyone’s gonna agree with the NAACP LDF organization, somebody’s gonna say, you should have picked that organization, that you should have picked, it doesn’t matter.

That is the one that I picked. If you agree and you like it, that’s great. If you don’t agree and you don’t like it, well, then that’s on you, it doesn’t pertain to me. But what I wanna point out is if you would like to donate to the NAACP LDF, NAACPLDF.org, and by the way, the main name will be in the show notes, then simply donate and send your receipt to support@jimfortin.com.

Whatever amount that you donate, I will 100% match until we hit $5,000. Everything’s kept anonymous. I don’t even see who donates. My team will just say, hey, this amount of money’s come in, but we started that tonight on this date.

So with the following that I have, I’m sure this will fill up. And I’m guessing that even in my transformational coaching program right now, they’ll fill up all of the quota of $5,000. But if not anyway, it’s for an amazing cause.

So, okay, I’ve spoken my piece in this particular episode. I, going forward, I don’t wanna tell you what the next episode’s gonna be is I don’t wanna lock myself in because there’s a lot of things at a higher spiritual level that I wanna share with you guys.

And sometimes I have to wait for the right timing, the right social environment, and just the right window to be able to share things when people are like, “Aha, I get it. Now I see life from a bigger spiritual perspective.” So I don’t wanna lock myself into, “Well, next week, this is what we’re gonna talk to.”

So next week, I don’t know what the, well, I do have some ideas, but right now I’m not gonna announce what the next podcast is going to be. And your transformational takeaway this week is that your altar is your conduit to connect and communicate with the universe.

That being said also is I wanna just heartfelt thank you and I have profound and deep gratitude for you listening to the podcast and you sharing. Stay well, you know, be in a harmonious place this week because as I’ve said before, which I’ve been criticized for saying this, but be the change you want to see in the world.

The more that we open ourselves up to unconditional love and peace and especially compassion, the more that we all can grow. Okay, stay well and make it an awesome week. Bye-bye.