Episode Transcript
Do you have trouble accepting things in your life, relationships, situations, world events? Would you like to understand how to increase acceptance? We'll be talking about that 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. Ann O'Hare, and this is the Spiritual American. Welcome back everyone. Thank you for joining us. Today we're gonna be talking about increasing acceptance, and as I was thinking about this, I came up with a formula, for those of you who've been watching or listening to the podcast, you know that I'm kind of logical and I like formulas or things that work. So I, from my experience, I kind of came up with this idea of how does this thing work? How do you release yourself from the. Resistance to things like we all say, oh, I'd like to be more accepting. I wanna be more open. And even if we're not thinking that way, we're gonna talk about does my resistance and anger and upset have any positive impact? That's something we can ask ourselves. But generally, when we talk about others, we wanna be accepting of other, we want others to accept us, right? Think about what we actually want from people. We don't want people to criticize us. We don't want people to give us advice that's not asked for. We don't want people to be overbearing. We don't want people to maybe get involved in my business. So there's kind of like an encroaching on the self even when we are thinking about others, and maybe we are angry with them or we're upset with their behavior, maybe we're too involved with them in our minds. So today I'm gonna talk about a little bit how we can work with this. And the idea of being more accepting is to help free myself from the feeling of anger or the feeling of frustration or the feeling, whatever stress or feelings that I'm feeling inside. So I came up with this idea, this thought came that it's like a seesaw. So let's say I am in a situation where I'm very angry at a person, a relationship, or a world events or something. I feel very angry and I have a hard time accepting what's happening. Imagine this vision of a seesaw. There's two aspects that we have to look at and work with that helps us to release some energy so that we can go into the spiritual thing. Because if I'm really angry and somebody says to me, well, it's all just meant to be and everything's supposed to be the way it is, it's not gonna help. Or if I feel very hurt by a relationship, somebody in my life. And I feel really hurt, and somebody says, nobody can really hurt anybody else. It's just you and whatever. No. We have to work through some of our feelings and ideas first in order to release some awareness so that I can go to that higher perspective. So what are the two parts of the seesaw? One part is my feelings, my actual feelings, not them, just my feelings. What am I feeling? And the other one is logic, or what did I say here? You're gonna challenge your thoughts. Gently, gently. Question. Question the thoughts. So the seesaw looks something like this. Somebody said something to me and now I'm upset and I feel angry. I feel angry and hurt, let's say. And I'm thinking to myself. They were rude. They shouldn't have said that to me. They don't love me. They're not a good friend. They were inappropriate. Let's say it's a worker, coworker or something. They were inappropriate. So I have feelings and thoughts. So my feelings are that I feel angry and hurt. My thoughts are they shouldn't have done it. I didn't deserve it. They're rude. That was wrong. Okay. So first we start with the feelings. What am I actually feeling? Take? So the seesaw is going, so now I'm gonna be on the feelings side of the seesaw. That means that I'm focusing on me, not on them, not on the thoughts, not on them. So I'm focusing on me. I feel hurt and angry. So let me check in with myself and say, why do I feel hurt? Now, the other one might start saying, you feel hurt because blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. No, no, no, no. Don't let the other one assert the authority, the the, they don't have the mic. Let's just say, when you're on one side, the feelings have the mic. Now the feelings have your attention. Just ask gently with gentle mercy and curiosity and interest, why do you feel hurt? And then let it show you why the hurt is there. It may be a vision of the past, it may be a vision of childhood. It may be a random thought or a random connection may come. It might be some kind of reflection on the self, like, I feel bad because I don't feel like I measure up. I feel hurt because I don't feel like I measure up. And I feel angry. I feel angry. Why do I feel angry? I feel angry because I don't feel safe. Let's say I'm making up like a possibility, so I'm paying attention to myself and I got the seesaw going. I got the feelings end of the seesaw, and I'm just dealing with the feelings right now. Okay? I understand you feel upset and you feel like you're not good enough. And you feel like you're afraid. You feel afraid. You feel like unsafe. Okay. So now just dealing with the feelings. I can give a little bit of a validation. I hear it. And also a little bit like, so I can start saying things to myself, like, okay, I understand that's a feeling. It's all, everything's gonna be okay. You are safe now. And I, I understand the feeling. Now we're gonna let the thoughts come in. So once I feel satisfied, once my feelings have calmed down a little bit, now I'm going to look at the thoughts. And the thoughts are, they shouldn't have done this. They shouldn't have done that. They were wrong. They were wrong, whatever the thoughts are. So now I can bring in, I have to start questioning my thinking. Based on spiritual knowledge, and hopefully you've all been watching the Thera Yoga course and you've been watching the podcast. So I'm gonna bring up a couple of points right now of spiritual knowledge that I can bring to bear in this situation. One point is we're all souls and we're all playing our part. We're all souls, and we're all playing our part perfectly. We're all playing our parts. Second point is I am not responsible for anybody else and nobody else is responsible for me. That's a big one because we keep on making others responsible for our feelings, isn't it? So right there, if I say to myself, I'm not responsible for anyone else and nobody else is responsible for me. This, these thoughts of they hurt me, they did this wrong, they did that wrong. Starts to calm down a little bit. It starts to calm down. And then I could ask myself at that point, so this is calming down now. And I could ask myself at that point, can I accept? That doesn't mean that I'm not gonna do something. I might actually do something, but this is the level of introspection, discernment. I'm figuring out what's going on inside myself. Can I now accept the situation as it is? Yes, I'm not gonna resist anymore. Something happened. I felt this way. These thoughts were generated, and now I know that okay, yes, I'm gonna accept that everybody's playing their part and I'm not responsible for anybody and they're not responsible for me. So now what do I do? Now? I need to take care of my feelings. But I have generated a feeling of acceptance. How much of our life is spent resisting what's happening? I feel hurt. I'm making them wrong. I feel hurt. I'm making them responsible. I don't give myself a chance to pay attention to myself and create that little pinch of distance. So increasing acceptance means that I'm practicing this introspection, discernment of myself and bringing in some spiritual knowledge, another piece of spiritual knowledge I can bring in karma, right? Whatever they said or did, that's their karma. That's their action. Whatever I do now, whatever I am feeling and doing now is my action. This is hard. I'm telling you, this is hard because when those emotions come up, it's very hard to be logical. That's why I'm calling it a seesaw. Stay on the seesaw until you feel like it's lightened up a little bit. What's the seesaw? I'm dealing with my feelings. I'm paying attention. I'm letting them talk. Maybe the first time you let them talk, they're gonna say, they did this. And they remember. They made me feel that. All right, let it talk. But then eventually calm it down. Okay, so you, they said this and you feel bad, but why do you actually feel bad? They said something, so why do you feel bad? Hmm. Interesting. That little bit of separation, right? Stay with yourself. Back and forth, back and forth. Is it really true that they hate me? Is it really true that they don't like me? I don't really know. So why should I be upset with the thought they don't like me? These are things I'm, I'm trying to make it understandable, but it's an internal process. So what are the takeaways with this? The takeaways with this are in order to help me increase acceptance and increase my ability to maybe make decisions and maybe not be so upset and angry and stressed out, maybe increase my ability to be calm in every in situations. I need to learn how to separate and create a little bit of distance between what happened, what I think, and how I feel. When I do that, I'm working with myself and I'm using that spiritual knowledge, and I'm working with my feelings and I'm questioning the thoughts. And then the last thing. As I'm working on this and I'm bringing in the the spiritual knowledge, what's the end result? What do I want to happen at the end of this? I would say that spiritually speaking, we want to transition from a feeling of hurt and kind of constrictedness into a feeling of openness, into a feeling of good wishes and pure feelings. Good wishes and pure feelings. I have good wishes and pure feelings for everyone. I am a soul. In my heart of hearts, I love everyone. But do you see It's gonna take me, it's going to take something to go from I feel hurt. They hate me. I can't stand myself to, to, I love everyone and I have good wishes and pure feelings. This is the issue that I've had with positive affirmations and, oh, just feel happy. Oh, just wish everybody well. Oh, just There's no way. I really feel that this is the time that we need to do this work. Get in there, roll up your sleeves, and have the courage to make that little bit of a disconnect. How do I feel? Always let the feelings go first. How do I feel right now? And why do I feel that way? Let the other person off the hook for a moment. Why do I feel this way? And then let it talk or whatever the picture or the memory or whatever comes up, deal with it will reveal itself to you. And then bring in the spiritual knowledge. Little by little, you're, you'll question those thoughts, and as they calm down, you're getting into this more natural state, the soul conscious awareness, and in that soul conscious awareness, you have nothing against anyone. I'm a pure being in the world with other beings. I have nothing against anyone. I have good wishes and pure feelings for everyone. Good wishes and pure feelings don't emerge by force. They emerge when there's space made for them. So this acceptance, being able to accept the situation, accept my feelings. Question my thoughts. Be able to be with the situation as it is long enough to get that space and then bring in that spiritual knowledge and then ultimately those spiritual feelings. This is the transformation that we're looking for. So I just went through it like three or four times, so I'm gonna leave it there. Maybe take notes, see if you can remember the principles of what I said, that the next time you get upset about something, take a moment and say, wait a minute. Let me try this thing. Let me try. I don't wanna suffer anymore and I want to be a generous person. I wanna feel happy. I wanna feel good towards everyone. But we also want it to be authentic. We also want it to be real, and therefore I need to work on what's actually there, which is hurt, blame, thoughts, resistance, and I need to get that space. So I will leave it there. I hope that you got something out of this that you can try. If you're interested in more meditation, more of this, of this information, more of this, the kids call it now vibe, more of this vibe. If you like this vibe, please check out the description. There's meditations there. There's online free classes, to continue to feel this vibe. What are we trying to do here? We're trying to open our hearts. We're trying to get back to our original nature. So I'll leave it there. Remember, our slogan is Heal, Empower, and Serve. And until next time, take care.
