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. With all the upheaval going on in the world today, have you ever thought to yourself, how do I figure out what's right and what's wrong? We're gonna talk about how to go beyond right and wrong in a spiritual sense today on the Spiritual American. Welcome back everyone. Thank you for being here. Today we're gonna talk about right and wrong, and I know that many of you, just like I was, were brought up with a sense of right and wrong in terms of behavior and so forth, but maybe nowadays the idea of right and wrong has become a little confusing. I might think that something's wrong and somebody else may have a compelling argument why they think it's right or they think it's okay. And I'm not talking about anything in particular because I think that this idea encompasses all different areas of life. Social, political, family, individual relationships, everything. There's always, maybe it seems now there's a lot of disagreement on what's right and what's wrong. So I'd like to have a short discussion now on what is right and wrong. And in a spiritual way can we have a perspective that transcends right and wrong? And I'm gonna say it is possible, but we have to understand a couple of things. So we're gonna talk about some laws. So right and wrong, we learned. First before we do the laws right and wrong, we learned from our religion, from our society, from our family. Right and wrong means. It's kind of a parameter. Do this, don't do that. But what we've done now is it's like, don't even think this way. Even if you think this way, it's wrong. If you feel this way, it's wrong. It's almost gotten to the point where who's right? Is anybody right nowadays? Um, but think about it for yourself. I'm saying what I'm observing, it seems to me that things maybe in the past used to be easy to gauge which way to go or how to feel about things. And maybe now it's not so easy. Things are more complex, right? So we learned what's right and wrong from our society and in spirituality. Like I said, there is no right and wrong, but there are laws. So we're gonna talk about the laws. The first law is that everyone is a soul. So these are principles. Everyone is a soul. We're all souls. We're all spiritual beings on earth playing our parts. And each of us has an individual part to play, which is perfect for them. That is their part. It's my part. Your part. I can't play your part. You can't play my part. There's this story about, I think there's been in movies and literature where if a person had a chance to live somebody else's life, they still wanted to go back to their problems in their own life because it was theirs. So if you think about that for a moment, that law, the law would be, or the principle would be that we're all souls. We're all here playing our parts, and each of us is unique and we all have a unique part to play. So that's one law. Second law is that you are not responsible for me, and I'm not responsible for you. Now, that's not to say that if you have a child, you're not responsible. Obviously, some relationships do have some responsibilities inherent in them. Like marriage for instance. There's a responsibility, there's an obligation, let's say inherent in that relationship. But in terms of being adults. Like people, adults, I'm not responsible for you. You're not responsible for me. That's a big one because don't we still maybe make other people responsible for our feelings or maybe say things like, you hurt my feelings. I hurt your feelings. You are disturbing me. Those kind of things. Nobody is responsible to make me happy. And I'm not responsible to make anybody else happy either. These are things to think about because if you notice, it's starting to take away some of the things that we would get angry or confused about. If everybody's playing their part and they're all souls and everybody's unique and they're all playing their exact correct part, accurate part, and nobody's responsible for anybody else. Doesn't that kind of free things up a bit? It does free things up a bit, but we need to know a little bit more. The third law that we need to know about is the Law of Karma, and we talked about karma at length. There's two videos about Karma in the first a hundred episodes, and the Raja Yoga Foundation course is in the playlist on the channel, on the YouTube channel. So you can check out that Raja Yoga Foundation course as a whole episode on Karma. But here in this case, I wanna talk about karma in the sense that not only am I playing my part, not only am I not responsible for anybody else or anybody else responsible for me, but I am living based on my own actions. Whatever I do, however I feel, whatever my attitude is, whatever energy, thoughts, feelings, actions I do, the results of those, I'm going to experience back. So if this is the first time you've heard Karma being talked like this, I'll just give a little example. So let's say I'm a business owner and I am a greedy business owner and I'm not paying attention to my employees, maybe just a little bit, but I don't really care about them and I don't care about their lives or I don't really give them a lot of personal respect, let's say, because all I'm interested in is the money and so forth. So I'm not really giving them much. So they feel, so that's the karma. That's how I, that's my energy. The result of that energy is that they are gonna feel that they're not supported. They're gonna feel like they can't trust me and so forth, and they're not getting maybe what they think they deserve from their boss. So now that's the karma that I am doing. What's the return of that karma? The return of that karma is that I will experience the same feelings that I am generating the environment for others to feel. So if I'm a boss, I'm in a position of power, let's say, right? People are depending on me. So I'm in a position of power. Whatever I do in that position, I am kind of, you don't wanna say causing, but I am because of that relationship, whatever I do has an impact. So what's gonna be the return of that impact? So let's say later on in life, I get sick and nobody wants to help me, or I lose my money and nobody wants to help me and I can't get any support and nobody loves me or something. You know, we've heard these things like if you're not nice, you're not gonna get later on. But my point is that it doesn't have to be a boss giving back feelings to me, it could be a completely different set of circumstances, but the feelings would be the same. So what does that mean in terms of right and wrong? It means that it's hard for me to be judgemental if I understand that law, that means that whatever I'm experiencing now. Whether positive or negative, whether you know, supportive and good and making me feel happy and good about myself, or making me feel sorrow or jealousy or anger or whatever. That is, the return of my own actions, my own energy from the past. Now that's good news and bad news. The bad news is I'm responsible. I mean, if I accept that, the good news is I can change it. I can change my attitude. I can change the way I think I can. And the best, one example of this I can think of is a Christmas Carol literary example. Ebenezer Scrooge, how he had the past, present, and future. He had a total look at his own behavior and then he changed it. And created positive karma after that. So we all have that potential. So if we get to look at our own, this is what meditation is for, by the way. You get to look at your own thoughts, your own feelings, your own behavior, your own life, your responsibility. And then you can see it and understand it and change it the way you want it, the way it's more authentic to you. So if we take all those laws into consideration, where's right and wrong? Seems to me like there is no objective right and wrong. But there is one thing that I'm gonna add because you're gonna say, what if somebody goes out, like people shooting people? And isn't that wrong? I'm gonna say that in spirituality, there is one religion that's kind of a universal or high religion, or a high law you can say, and that's nonviolence. So you could argue that violence is wrong. I'm not, still not gonna use the word wrong. I'm gonna say that's a universal no no, let's say, and we all kind of know that, isn't it? We all understand intuitively that it's not right to hurt, that hurting isn't the right thing to do, and it doesn't feel right when I'm hurt either. So in that sense, you could say that violence is wrong in a sense. Okay, but what can I do about what's going on outside? Because you could say, well, Dr. Anne, then what am I supposed to do? Aren't those people wrong that are doing all those, you know, the wars and stuff like that? And I would say. Yes. Violence, yes, but also in the sense that when we get into the politics and stuff like that, we get caught up in the expansion of people's opinions and everything, and then we start judging that. Is that right? Is this right? Is this right? Is this right? Let them all play their parts. Everybody's playing their part. For me, the way I see it now, you can have compassion for suffering, what's happening. We know there's a lot going on right now in the world, but if I get caught up in all the differences of all the different people, I'm going to be upset myself. I need to be calm in order to help. If I wanna help, if I wanna remain stable and be a blessing to the world or try to serve the world, I need to be calm myself. One of the ways to be calm is to sort some of this out in terms of right and wrong, and in terms of reacting to all these different opinions and all these different things. So if I remain stable, if I understand, okay, this is the way it is, this is what's happening with the world, and these are the way all the souls are playing their parts. Nobody's, I'm not responsible, they're not responsible, and I'm watching the suffering and I'm sending good wishes. Now, obviously, if you have a chance to do something, physically do it. It's not to say that I can't do something physically, but there are millions of us and billions of us that aren't in a position to stop violence and suffering. What we can do is continue to purify our own consciousness. Continue to become peaceful ourselves. Let go of all this reactivity inside ourselves so that we can generate that generous energy that will help people, will help those who are suffering that energy, and it'll also help me. So is there such a thing as right and wrong? Well, you could say it depends on your perspective. I am saying today that in spirituality it is helpful for us to try to move beyond the ordinary sense of right and wrong. Maybe hold onto that supreme religion of non-violence. I would never be able to, I don't think I could ever say that violence is right. Obviously self-defense, you know these are common sense, right? If it's self-defense, somebody's attacking you, you wanna save yourself. That's makes sense. That's not violence, right? Yeah, but this anger and rage and hurting and making somebody wrong and doing something and, you know, whatever, we've seen it all, that kind of thing. So obviously we can acknowledge that that's not right or that's not in, in a, in alignment with spiritual, the highest spiritual religion, let's say nonviolence. But in the meantime, we're still here and we still have to live here. So I wanna leave it on a positive note. The positive note is that whatever you change inside yourself, it is making a difference. For others, it's making a difference for those around you, it's making a difference for your health and your body. If you can relieve yourself of judgment, relieve yourself of the need to be right and make somebody wrong. That's a big one. Think about it. Think about it for yourself this week. Do I really get angry at people and wanna be right? Do I get angry at myself? Is there a way that I can release this? Can I be able to see things as following these laws, myself and everyone else? So think about it and I'll leave it there. And so remember, our slogan is Heal, Empower, and Serve. And please check out the description where there's meditation videos, free online classes, and the Brahma Kumaris website where you can check out where to visit a bra kure center near you if you like what you're hearing and you like this vibe and you like these explanations and this knowledge. Okay? So until next time, take care everyone.
