Episode Transcript
We Americans enjoy a wonderful and powerful way of life, but internally and in relationships we may wish for better. Join me as we look beneath the surface and gain insights to transform every aspect of your life. My name is Dr. Anne O'Hare, and this is the Spiritual American. Hello everyone and welcome to the Spiritual American. My name is Dr. Anne O'Hare, and I'm your host. And today. We'll be talking about the intellect, the power of the intellect. Very interesting. So what is the intellect maybe you've heard of? The word intellect being used where intellectual, like he's an intellectual. So what does an intellectual mean? In my, the way I think of it, it means this is someone who uses the higher faculties of their mind, let's say, and they consider things at a very high level and so forth. They're an intellectual. But today I'm gonna talk about the intellect as part of consciousness as part of my inner workings of myself. We've had many talks on this podcast about the mind, but today and what the mind is, right? The mind is that field of experience where we have thoughts and feelings and memories and so forth. The intellect is another function of consciousness, and it has a different array of purposes. So first of all, what is one of the functions of the intellect? Well, the intellect helps you evaluate. So this is right and this is wrong. This is good. This is bad. This is good for me. This is not good for me. The intellect is essential because it's the one that can see things discern well. This is not this. This is better. This goes with this group, this goes with that group that's all functioning of the intellect. That's one function of the intellect. And by the way, the intellect is a stabilizer. And you'll see what I mean by that. So let's say you have a choice, right? And you're trying to figure something out. Well, at that moment where you're trying to figure it out, it's almost like you're not stable or you need. Resolution, let's say. So the intellect is a resolver and a stabilizer because it helps to evaluate and helps inform a decision. 'cause the intellect can also take information in to help it figure out what's going on. So evaluating is one function. The next function is kind of nice the way this works, but the intellect supports the heart. What do I mean by that? So let's say you have an intuition about something. I have a feeling like, I don't know, I have a feeling like maybe I shouldn't go on that bus. Or I have a feeling that this person is not on the up and up or something. The intellect will value and validate that intuition. Or invalidate it, maybe. But I like the part where it validates it, so it's almost like it's backing it up. So in terms of intuition it validates and supports the intuition. The intellect also supports belief and faith. So I believe in whatever spiritual study or something, I believe in meditation because I believe that meditation is the primary practice for self-care. I believe that the intellect comes in and stabilizes that belief. So why is that a good thing? Because sometimes we have to stand on our beliefs, right? Or maybe express them to other people. When somebody has a different belief, I have to stand by my belief. And so the intellect helps stabilize me in that belief. It gives me a sense of, yes, this is what I believe. Also with faith, yes, I believe this and I have faith in this. Let's say I have faith in God or faith in what Jesus said or faith in the Quran or faith in the Hindu principles or whatever it is. I'm using faith 'cause faith is sometimes attached to a religion. Or you could say, I have faith in my husband. I have faith in my wife. I have faith in my marriage. And so the intellect doesn't leave that thought or that feeling hanging there. The intellect comes in and gives it support, makes it feel stable and real. The intellect makes things feel real. A beautiful function. The last function and this function that I think is the most important and the most powerful is that the intellect assigns identity. How does that work? I'm sure many of you have been through a situation where you were doing behaviors that maybe were not so healthy for you. Maybe there's an addiction or maybe I am overweight and I have to make a change, or maybe I haven't been making a change. Maybe I've been resisting, kind of falling back into unhealthy behavior patterns and maybe I'm not able to change it. How many of you have gotten to a point where maybe I've had enough and that's it, I'm not doing that anymore. Whether it's a behavior, it could be, a relationship where all of a sudden you're like, no more done and you're on to the next thing. That moment of done with this is the intellect saying, I'm not that person anymore. It's a very, very powerful moment. I heard this story one time where, and this is not unusual, where let's say a husband and wife get married and the husband smokes, and as soon as the wife gets pregnant, he quit smoking. So what happened maybe inside himself, he said, I don't wanna be a father that smokes. So the intellect assigns that identity. I don't wanna be this person anymore. I'm gonna be a father that doesn't smoke. So he is signing identity, and in this case it's identity in relation to life, life circumstances. So one time a patient said to me, how do you quit smoking? And I said, become someone who doesn't smoke. Just like that example. So the power of the intellect in this case is being able to assign identity against something that's already there. So this is the way I'm behaving. This is who I am. And the intellect wakes up and says, this is who I am, Uhuh. Done. I'm not that. And I'm moving forward into what I feel like I wanna be. Maybe I wanna be out of this relationship. Maybe I wanna be a person who doesn't overeat. Or maybe I wanna be a person who is healthy. Maybe I don't want to be a person who works in the stock market anymore or doesn't wanna do this job anymore or whatever. There's a lot of things where the intellect can wake up and say, this is not me. Nope, not anymore. And bam, I'm out. So that is one, assigning of identity from the intellect. So where does spirituality come in with this? Spirituality comes in because in Raja yoga meditation, I am telling myself who I am as a spiritual being, and it has nothing to do with the circumstances. So the other one had to do with the circumstances, and this one has nothing to do with the circumstances. So what do I mean? I'm sitting in meditation and I'm telling myself I'm a soul. My nature is peace. I am living consciousness. I am the spiritual being. I have a benevolent nature. Loving nature. I am peaceful. I'm telling myself this and what am I doing? I'm saying, I am this. I'm not saying I'm doing this, or I'm related to this, or I wanna be that. I'm telling myself I am it. So the intellect is getting a new self to consider. Wow. Okay. So I am peaceful. My nature is peace. I'm eternal. I can't die. The body dies, but I don't die. Okay, let me try that on. So as I'm meditating, I'm actually experiencing and trying to develop a different identity that I can then live into. And what happens when I do that? Well, the intellect becomes sharper because meditating itself, the silence of the meditation and the break from the normal thinking actually stimulates the intellect, wakes it up, and now I'm giving it this new information because I want to use that identifying, assigning identity function of the intellect. But I wanna do it in a spiritual way. So I'm sitting for meditation and I'm telling myself that I'm peaceful, I'm loving, I'm benevolent. Okay, I get up, I go to work or whatever, or I'm home with my family and I start having a fight with my husband. All of a sudden, in the middle of the fight, the intellect wakes up and says, wait a minute. You're supposed to be peaceful. Why are you angry? Why are you fighting? So in the circumstance, the intellect wakes up and says, wait a minute, that's not me. I told myself I'm this. So what you're doing is you're creating two selves, and isn't that the way it is when one, like that thing where you quit smoking or you stop the relationship, you see it clearly and you're like, okay, that's done and I'm moving on. But in spirituality, you're not moving on. You're changing from within the situation. So example, we had a student who, and I've given this example before, but she had taken the class and the Karma class and she'd been meditating and just like I said, in that example, in the middle of a fight with her husband, she realized that she was wrong and that she was the one who started it. So she stopped and the middle of that fight and said, you know what? I started this fight. I'm sorry, I'm not gonna do that anymore. And the husband was like, so what happened? She in that moment said, I am not this person that's fighting and I'm not gonna be that person anymore. It's just like that breakup thing. But the difference is you're not leaving anything. You're not leaving anything unless you decide to. But in raja yoga you're changing your self reference to spiritual. I am eternal. I am living consciousness. I'm the soul. I am benevolent. My nature is peace. Those pure thoughts and that energy begins to have an impact on my inner world. This is why people meditate. They want to become calmer. They want to become less active mentally. Maybe they wanna heal, maybe they wanna get over illnesses. Maybe they wanna transform their relationships. All of that is available with a strong intellect, right? Because like we said, something doesn't work. You get to change it. It's not only about decision making, though. Although that helps because as I make decisions and my life becomes more supportive, to me, it makes my life easier and I feel calmer. If you're in a bad relationship that you're unhappy in, it's hard to be calm and feel safe. So the intellect assigns can assign the new identity, and we want it to be spiritual. One other thing, why is it important that I say I'm eternal? Because a lot of the fears that we have in life are based on the fear of losing, the fear of dying, the fear of being abandoned, the fear of being alone, and so forth. When I say I'm eternal, a lot of those fears begin to go. The fear of being alone. I wanna say when we meditate and we start to have experiences in peace that are outside of our regular thinking patterns, and we have experiences of peace, I start to realize that in soul consciousness, I feel connected to everybody. So the thought of being alone doesn't really make sense because I am in essence connected to everyone. At an energetic level. I'm. Uh, uh, there's no difference. I'm not, so I can feel everyone, and that's why in meditation sometimes we say you can serve the world with your mind because at that level of energy we're connected. The reason I'm saying that is 'cause sometimes the feelings of fear or loneliness or whatever can be very compelling. And I'm saying that not only can we make decisions with the power of the intellect, but the stabilizing power of the soul conscious identity also helps us dissolve fear, dissolve the feeling of loneliness, dissolve the feeling of disheartenment, anxiety, depression, all that. It's amazing what the intellect can do if we know how to use it. Use it in a spiritual way. And when I say spiritual, I mean in a way that works for me and works for everybody else. That's what I mean. Because everyone's souls, we're all souls. The rest of the differences that we see don't interfere with the fact that we're all souls. And that unifying idea is why when the intellect gets sharper and sharper, I'm able to change anything, everything, because I'm dealing with it from the essence, from the foundational level of energy and of truth of spiritual truth. So just to recap, the intellect is a function of consciousness, very powerful. And what does it do? It evaluates. It backs up the intuition and the heart and the belief systems and the faith systems and all the feelings backs and can back it up. And most importantly, it assigns identity. Identity when I have to get away from something and also identity when I'm trying to realize something and change into something, it's not really changing. It's more like getting in touch with the eternal truth or the essence of my being. I. So if I identify with that, that transforms, that has the potential to transform everything. So the intellect and actually Raja yoga meditation is sometimes called meditation of the intellect, yoga of the intellect. Because when we empower the intellect with spiritual identity, that's it. Everything else can be changed. So I'll leave it there. I hope that for those of you who are interested in this, that you enjoyed this discussion. We do have meditation videos in the description below, and also free meditation classes if you're interested in learning how to do raw yoga, meditation. And my experience, like I have shared on this podcast in 14 years of practicing, I've been able to transform every area of my life. So I'll leave it there. Remember, our slogan is Heal, empower, and Serve. And until next time, take care.
