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. Ann 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 will be talking about being gentle. This is the first of the new hundred episodes. If you saw the recent commercial. We finished our first a hundred episodes and now we're moving into a new realm of understanding. I'll still be using a lot of explanation, but I would like us as I'm speaking, to try to feel the, whatever the feeling or virtue is that I am talking about. I'm gonna use some examples and we should try to reflect, as I'm talking, try to reflect on what I'm talking about. We want to make a memory of what we're talking about. Let's say memories are created when we have an experience with some feelings associated with it. Now, in the past, maybe there's been a lot of negative feelings, sorrow associated with circumstances. But in spirituality, we want to start creating natural nature associations and what's my natural nature? I'm the soul, and what's my nature? Peace, harmony. Love, bliss, purity, innocence, happiness. These are my natural qualities. So starting today, starting with this episode, we're going to be exploring that realm of experience, and the first thing that we're gonna talk about is being gentle. So. When I say the word gentle, the first thought that came to mind when I was preparing for this is a parenting technique. When you have young children who are hitting each other or hitting the parent that you would say, no, be gentle. You would show the child don't hit touch like this. Even speaking, don't yell. Speak with your inside voice or like you trying to train the child to understand that, first of all, it's behavior, right? We don't want hitting and we don't want screaming, and we have to teach them how to live in the world. But you're also teaching the actual technique. You're giving them the experience of talking softly or touching gently. But as an adult, I'd like to explore it a little deeper. What does it feel like when I am living during the day? What's my energy like as I'm moving throughout the day? Do I feel nervous? Do I feel driven? Do I feel a little scared or a little aggravated? Do I feel a little irritated? Is that the energy that's going on within me? One of the things that I tried to do recently, we went on a little vacation to the beach and I really got a lot outta that vacation. It was just two days, three days, but I really used it as an opportunity to calm down my nervous system, like really make an effort to relax the system, not just my mind, but my body as well, like lower the idle on my energy. So when I came back, I had to go to work and I was thinking to myself, how am I gonna keep this energy going without going back into a more, I'm gonna say constricted, results oriented, driven, reactive, overstimulated kind of energy inside. So what I did was I forced myself to type really slowly and if other thoughts were coming, like other thoughts that may want to drag me forward into complaining thoughts or irritated thoughts at work, I pulled myself back and I said, no, I'm not gonna do that. I actually told myself last night the computer wasn't working right and I was. Again, getting stimulated with that energy, that other energy, and I told myself, you know what? I'm gonna throw this whole computer out the window. Why am I saying that? To be gentle and to be calm. What I understand right now, there needs to be a feeling of safety and empowerment. In order to feel calm and in order to be able to live in a gentle way, we need to feel safe. And we need to feel like we can function in the world. So feeling safe. The reason I said, I'm gonna throw the computer out the window. What that means is I'm not going to let anything make me feel upset or feel irritated or feel driven. I know that for some of you, if you're listening to this, it may sound like, how is that possible? It is possible, but I recommend if you are interested in doing this work that I'm talking about, I would recommend watching the first a hundred episodes because I'm going through all of the stuff that we're doing now, all of the emotions, as much as I could express in a year. And using the laws of karma and natural laws and understanding of spiritual knowledge and my experiences and every like to try to break it up a little because I am the one that used to say that gentleness was inauthentic. I'm the one that used to say positive affirmations don't work, and I don't think they do work unless you do some of that preliminary breaking up of the old stuff. So I recommend go back and watch a lot of that stuff. If you're listening to me talk about being gentle and being calm and feeling safe, and for you it feels like, okay, I got too much going on. I can't then watch the other a hundred episodes if you feel like, yeah, you know what, I'm working on myself and I feel like I'm ready now. I'm ready to explore what life is like without all that. That's what's coming now. So I tried to make myself type slow. I created the safety, like I knew I was getting irritated, and I said, Nope. You know what? Nope. You can threaten to stop the activity like inside. Like, we're gonna stop if you're, you know, if there's irritation, we're going to stop. We don't allow that to happen. That's one side of it. The other side is to feel empowered. And I'm gonna say we feel empowered when we get a good result from something. So what good result did I get from typing slower from going to the beach and really working on calming my nervous system? What benefit did I get by creating that safe thing, that safety feeling that if something gets me upset, I could just stop it on a dime because I'm not gonna let myself get upset. What is the benefit? For me, the benefit is that I get to stay with myself in such a way that I feel good about myself. It's subtle, and I'll try to explain the difference. Before maybe I felt good about myself, if I was able to accomplish something or I felt good about myself if somebody gave some kind of indication that I was good or I was doing a good job, but being gentle, being gentle with myself, being gentle with my behavior, being gentle with my voice, being gentle with my interactions. What's happening is I'm getting a very subtle internal self validation. I never had that. This is brand new and it's internal self validation, and it's also a feeling of comfort. Like, I'm okay here. I don't need to speak. I don't need to do that like I used to do. I don't need to complain. I don't need to go out of my safe, soft area inside of myself. So think about it for yourself. Where are you on that? In that energy? Are you kind of overthinking over worrying over irritated and your whole day is made up of that energy? And what happens if you try to calm down? Are we able to calm down? It takes something for me. It took something to break that up for me, and knowledge and practice of meditation was the way to break that up. Now I'm looking to go deeper. So we can do a little bit of a reflection here. I'm gonna talk about different areas and invite you to take a moment and we'll go through each thing and just see, look for yourself and see if you have these things. So reflection number one, do I find myself raising my voice a lot? And what does that mean? That means that I am speaking and. For some reason, I feel like I need to push my voice out further, maybe to make a difference, maybe to get somebody's attention, but it's almost like a forceful use of the voice. So ask yourself, do I raise my voice? How often do I raise my voice? The second one is. When I'm around other people, do I prefer being around calm people or energetic, talkative people, which do I prefer? Now, when I'm asking you this, it doesn't mean that one is bad and one is good. There's a time for everything. But in this episode, we're looking at the possibility of changing energies. Changing from a agitated, stimulated, forceful, maybe sometimes out of control energy to a calm, safe, protected self-respect, and also feeling comfort like I feel good. I feel happy inside myself. That energy we're looking at making that shift. So when you look at being with other people right now, which do you prefer? Do you like being with calm people or do you like being with excited, you know, people with excitement? And then finally ask yourself when I am, let's say. Getting up in the morning and taking care of myself, or picture a part of your day. Picture a snapshot part of your day, maybe getting ready for work, cooking, dinner, some part of your regular day. And just notice right now as you're looking at that time of your day, what kind of energy is running? Am I calm and happy? Am I gentle with my family? Am I gentle with my body? Something to think about, to look at. Not overthink. This is not about overthinking anymore. We're really just gonna take a look and see. I think in my experience, that being overstimulated and overactive physically has really, it's been difficult for me to feel good in myself. It's like I'm giving out all my energy all the time to the situations. There's a time for that, but I think it's out of balance. And so I am working on this, generating this gentle energy, a gentle energy towards myself, towards my body, with my activities. Maybe soften my voice, maybe not speak so much, maybe try to stay back and see what happens. Maybe let other people talk. I mean. These are things that I never did before because it was always, the outside was always more important. Even as I'm talking right now, I'm paying attention to the energy that's happening. As you could probably tell. Doesn't mean that I can't be more excited or passionate or use that other energy, but if I'm trying to build up this side, it's a good idea to practice. So I will leave it there. I hope that you are able to kind of pick up the energy of what we're talking about now. Take a couple of minutes to reflect and see how you are. And one last thing about meditation. We talk about meditation on this podcast. Meditation is the primary self-care practice. The practice of getting up in the morning and spending 15, 20 minutes sitting down watching a commentary guided meditation, or playing some soft music and just reaffirming, I'm a soul. My nature is peace. I'm a soul. I am a benevolent being. I'm a soul and everybody else's souls, and we're all playing our parts, and this is what life is. If I reaffirm that. I am beginning to give myself a few minutes of peace, a few minutes of understanding, and little by little that will begin to impact the rest of my day. We have to do meditation to create that seed of peace within my, within our mind, within our heart, awaken our original nature. So I will leave it there. Remember, our slogan is Heal, Empower, and Serve. And if you've been watching, let's just talk about this episode. The first a hundred episodes is basically about healing and empowering. I think this next bunch of episodes about pure feelings is also about empowerment, but especially because we're serving ourself by being gentle, we're being good to ourselves and then others, of course, and that service. So thank you all for listening, and we will see you next time. Take care.
