Episode Transcript
Have you ever thought about the deeper possibilities in meditation? When you think of meditation, what do you think about? Sitting still and trying to be quiet? Maybe calming your mind. What if I was to tell you that you can access some very deep understandings about yourself, God, and consciousness. That's what we're going to talk about today on the Spiritual American. 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. Welcome back everyone. So today's gonna be an interesting talk. In the context of meditation, many times we talk about relaxation, we talk about calming the emotions we talk about. Maybe on the edge we would talk about self-realization. And of course those are all available. Today, I'd like to go a little further and talk about God and consciousness in the context of Raja Yoga, meditation. So I'll start with God. So when we talk about God. Um, we all have some idea or memory or context with which we remember God. In this case, I'd like to talk about God as a soul. So I'm a soul. So the main tenant of Raja Yoga meditation is that I'm a soul, my nature is peace. I am telling myself that I am a spiritual being. I am living consciousness. I'm a point of light. You could say I'm a point of light in the center of the forehead, or I am a point of living consciousness. God is also a point of living consciousness. God is not a human being, but He's a soul and He is ever pure ocean of peace, ocean of love, ocean of all these spiritual qualities, the qualities of the soul. So that's the basic premise of God. But what I'd like to talk about today is that where does the self come in? Where does the self come in, and where does God come in? And how does this work in meditation? So first I'd like to say that just like any other thing that we become aware of, there was a time when we weren't aware of that thing. So if I never met somebody before. And then I meet them. I am putting them in my memory, and now I'm relating to them in my own memory, whether they're physically there or not. That interaction has left a impression on me, and I carry that with me. So this memory, I'm relating to the memory of the person. I made an idea about them or something, and now I'm remembering. It's the same thing with God. I'm remembering my Christian friends, of course, having this deep experience of a realization that Jesus is their Lord and Savior, and that they have been redeemed for their sins, their their sins are forgiven, and that that had touched their heart so deeply that they have this memory of Jesus and God in their minds, and it's so powerful that it's transformative. It's transforming their personality, transforming their world view and so forth. In the context of Raja Yoga meditation, there's some similar experience available. It is very powerful and very subtle. So when I'm talking about myself as a soul and I wanna relate to God, God is incorporeal. So it has to be soul to soul. So how do I relate to God? So I was reminded recently of communion. Growing up Catholic. We had the ritual of communion where you go and receive the host, which represents the body of Christ. The idea is to connect with Christ and connect with Jesus, and connect with God. So as a child, I wasn't so interested in the ritual, but I did like what happened after you got the host? So you get the host and you put it in your mouth, and then the instruction is you're supposed to go back to your seat and then pray or be with God alone. Just you and God. And I remember that was my favorite part because it was just me and God. Somehow in the silence of myself, the silence of my mind or my heart, or the silence of me, God and I were able to be together. I loved it. That was my favorite part of it. So that's one aspect. Another aspect is that, for instance, maybe you have loving feelings towards God. I had this thought a while ago that if you think of yourself and not God, then that's arrogance. But if you think of God, if you remember God and not yourself, then that's religion, like religion without spirituality, let's say. But I feel like you have to have yourself and God, like there has to be both. There has to be. So in Raja Yoga meditation, both are souls. So they're starting out equal. Obviously there's a difference between a human soul and God, the Supreme Soul. But I am, I can say the child of God. I'm God's child. God is my father. So that relationship has a heartfelt connection. There's a connection. It's not like I have to choose one or the other. So one of the things I'd like to share in this video is that meditation may be something different than we thought of. Maybe there's a lot of you out there that are agnostic, that are atheist and so forth, and I'm gonna talk about the consciousness side of things in a moment. But on the God side of things, meditation, maybe many of you out there may not have really connected deeply in your religious practice. I know many people have left their religious practice for one reason or another. I know early in my life, my family had kind of stopped going to church and so forth, probably because of the political and things that were going on at the time, and they figured, well, I'm not gonna go to church. But in meditation we can have that connection. We can create a connection of memory. Remember how we create a memory? I'm creating it inside myself. So if I remember God and I have that experience in silence, it was me and the Father. I can remember that. And that can become transformative. So one other thing I was thinking of was I was watching a video of a guru with a group of people and a person stood up to ask a question, and the question was coming from, I believe that this person was probably christian or Western, religion in some, in some way. And the person said, well, who do I pray to then? So the guru was talking about consciousness. The guru was talking about energy and purity and consciousness, and there was no God in the conversation. So the person stood up and said, well, who do I pray to? So the, the response from the guru was wonderful, and this is the other thing I wanna share of, of what's available in meditation. His response was, if you feel feelings of love or feeling like connection, like you want connection, then you can have that. You can feel connected. You can feel love, you can feel like somebody's looking over you, like somebody's with you, like you are not, are not alone. Like you're with someone deep inside of yourself and in your heart that's available. You can also feel like you're more independent and you're experiencing yourself like self-realization and isn't that wonderful? Like a freedom in that relationship with God. I can feel devotion, I can feel surrendered. I can feel connected. I can feel completely lost in love. And then on the other side, I can feel completely in my own self. So I really like that. So let's talk a minute about consciousness and that side of it. In my practice, I am working both sides of the equation. I'm working the God side, and I'm working the consciousness side. For me, I feel like that makes sense to me because I would like to know the truth about things. I like to know how things work. I'm a little more of an analytical thinker. If you've been watching the podcast, you know that I'm kind of trying to explain things so that they make sense, so they need to make sense to me as well. So the science of consciousness is when you look at, I am a being of energy, I am consciousness. And how does consciousness work? Well, we talked about memory, we talked about feelings, we talked about feeling of connection. All of that is there that I can play around with. So in meditation, what I can do is I can say I am the soul. I'm the living being. I am living consciousness. This is my body and I understand how the mind works. I can understand how the intellect works. I can understand how memories and thoughts and beliefs are influencing me. I can learn how to choose and become powerful. All of that's available without bringing God as another being in. But I feel for me, I feel like doing both is the be is really good. Because then you have the, you have the moment where you can feel like if you feel like you need to talk or feel like a feeling of connection. Human beings need to have feeling of connection. It's a human need that we need to feel belonging. So that's there. And then also the need to understand and feel powerful inside. So this consciousness, the science of consciousness, allows us to feel independent and feel powerful. Like I understand what's happening. The other thing about the science of consciousness is the relationship between consciousness and matter. And in Raja Yoga, meditation, and knowledge, it's explained that we understand that I, the consciousness am, you could say the master of matter in the sense that my being here is what enlivens this body, let's say. We also know that our thoughts and our feelings create an experience, right? So I'm having an experience. So my experience, and it also affects the body, it affects matter. It might also affect my behavior, and then it affects others, right? My attitudes and behavior. So there were into the law of karma now, right? But all of that has to do with consciousness. It has to do with how consciousness and matter are interacting and the beauty of that relationship. So today talking about God and consciousness, I know that there's many of you out there. All of us have some relationship to something spiritual. I know some people say, oh, I just believe in energy, or I just believe in the universe. I just believe in the law of attraction. I just believe that's fine because. In meditation, in Raja Yoga meditation especially, you can explore these ideas and contemplate them, and other, other revelations and other realizations will emerge. It's possible to satisfy the heart and the intellect. It's possible to love God without feeling bad about yourself. That's a big one because coming from the Christian background, and I'm not saying that Christianity is supposed to be like this, but I picked up that, you know, I'm a sinner and you know, it just seems like it was never any way to succeed. But what I've understood is that God is loving, peaceful, sweet, benevolent, and I have those qualities as well. The challenge is to remove the influence of the other stuff so that I can begin to be peaceful and generous and what we would call spiritual to show that personality. Even if you are on the consciousness side of the equation. I do feel that when we understand something, we become less afraid, we become calmer, we become more powerful, we become more stable. So I think working both sides is the optimum, I will say. And I think I will leave it there. My wish for this episode was to give you all something new to think about. I know many of you are very clear what religion you are, and that's fine because it's great. Every soul has the opportunity to align itself with whatever religion or ideas or beliefs that feel right to that individual. I find that when we find the right path. A lot of fear and a lot of confusion goes away, and then the work begins, right? So for those of you out there who have found your path, the work just begins. Because we need to remove some of our old patterns. You could call it sin or baggage, or whatever you wanna call it. Trauma hurt. We all have to heal and become free of our past, let's say. So I'm hoping that you can use these ideas of God and of consciousness and understand that in meditation, these are, these are ways, these are things that can be explored. So I will leave it there. Please check out the description below where there are meditations available for practice. Free online meditation class and also the Brahma Kumaris website. You can check out to see if there's a center near you to get in touch with a place where you can learn more about this if you're interested, and see how meditation can actually help you connect with God and consciousness and yourself in a new way, in a very powerful, meaningful way. So I will leave it there. Remember, our slogan is Heal, Empower and Serve. And until next time, take care.
