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 moving forward. Keep moving forward. This is an important topic. I remember one time one of our very senior sisters way back in the forties and fifties in India. She was the head of the organization, the co-head of the organization at the time, and they asked her, what is the most important quality that you need to be successful in spiritual practice or spiritual endeavor? And she said, determination. So what does that mean? What does determination mean? It means I don't give up. I'm not giving up no matter what. Keep moving forward also means that, even if it's one molecule better than yesterday, I'm still moving in that direction. And we're gonna talk about today a little bit about spiritual disciplines. What in the Brahma Kumaris what we practice and what we recommend for spiritual practice. And understanding that sometimes it's not so apparent what is happening when we're meditating. We have a habit. I think the way I grew up, at least, that we have a habit of being very interested in things that we get automatic validation from. And if we don't get that automatic validation, we're not gonna be interested in it. And now with screens and everything else, we're getting really lightning fast. Feedback now, and I think that we're getting used to that, but in spiritual practice they may not be immediate feedback. There can be if we're able to experience peace and we're able to experience the beautiful recognition that I'm a soul and I am peaceful and I accept that with my intellect, that's a beautiful automatic recognition. And also the feeling of peace. That feeling of wellbeing, feeling of self-respect. That's an automatic, happens when I experience it, so I'm getting it back in the same moment. But what happens when I have to deal with my behavior? What happens when I have to deal with other people? What happens when I have to deal with my life, with my family, with my body, with my health, with everything, money. Not to mention what's going on in the world, right? So how do I keep moving forward? How do I remain determined? How do I remain stable when I'm trying to manage all these things? There's a wonderful thing that in the Brahma Kumaris, we practice, we call it the daily timetable, and I remember there was another. Very high level Yogi, who was head of the organization very shortly before she passed, and she used to say that the best way to make intense effort, spiritual effort is to follow the daily timetable. So we're gonna talk about the daily timetable, but before we do, I wanna say what the daily timetable has meant to me. Whether it was COVID or a situation, an emotional problem, a family problem, a uh, some money situ, whatever. Upset or thing happened in my life. I always knew that I was getting up for meditation the next day that I was going to class So there's some stability that helps us move forward. As long as we keep doing the basic disciplines of the practice, it's going to help us. Now, of course, when everything's going okay, we can go deeper and we should be going deeper. We should be, we call it churning. We should be thinking about the knowledge we should be working on our relationships, working on our behavior and things like that. But this basic daily routine that I'm gonna share right now is a fundamental, like a rock that you can stand on. Something's going bad, you can definitely go back to that. So the first part of the daily routine is morning meditation. So we recommend that. We get up early in the morning and we get up very early. We get up between two and five in the morning for meditation. Now, it doesn't mean that everybody has to get up between two and five, although two and five is a good time to meditate because most people are sleeping at that time, and it's a very calm time and a peaceful time. It's not easy to get very active during that time of day, so you can get a good quiet time to focus on the mind and focus on the experience during meditation. But we recommend maybe get up 30 minutes earlier. There's a way to create a time period for yourself before your day begins. In order to meditate. So for me, I understood that this was the fundamental practice and I need to do it. So even if there are times where you sleep through. In the beginning it's very not easy to get up early if you're not used to getting up early. Took a long time. But now I get up early in the morning and I enjoy it now because it's better you have more of the day, and also it's quieter. It's easy to focus in the morning. So morning meditation. Second thing is studying every day study, study something, whether it's a scripture, affirmations, we have a daily class that we study. And in that study, you're bringing forth spiritual principles, ideas, virtues. And then you take, what I did was I used to take a piece of paper and write down my point for the day, this is what I'm gonna work on today. Whether it's love or patience or forgiveness, something like that. That's what I'm gonna be working on, and I'm gonna be watching myself today and try to develop that virtue. And I put it in my pocket and I bring it with me throughout the day. And then we have, during the day, we have mini meditations. You stop for a few minutes and you try to remind yourself, I'm a soul. My nature is peace. I'm trying to remind myself throughout the day I'm gonna go through the thing because there's actually a video that I did on the, on the spiritual lifestyle, the daily routine and you can review that. But there's little things to do, maybe five things to do. And that foundation, there's an evening meditation and before you go to sleep, you're watching your day in your mind before you go to sleep, so that you can see how you did and you can evaluate without judgment and help yourself to continue moving forward. So that at the end of the day when I'm looking at myself or even during the day, if I'm watching myself, I'm trying to learn, I'm trying to progress. And keep moving forward also means don't let yourself get stopped. One of the things I find is that when we get very emotional, whether it's sadness or fear or anxiety, maybe some depression or uncertainty, or maybe I'm just reacting and I find that it stops us. Whether it stops me from talking, it stops me from participating, it stops me from meditating, it stops me from eating properly, so I get stopped. And when we get stopped, I think we feel bad. There's a thing comes in that says, oh, well, maybe I shouldn't do it. Or maybe the doubt starts to come in. So keep moving forward means don't give into the doubt. Don't give up on yourself. Every day is a new day to get up and start meditation. Every day is a new day to study something that can be uplifting or helpful in a spiritual way. Even if I failed at something or my behavior has been a certain way for many, many years, it doesn't mean that it can't be changed. I'm here to say that anything can be changed. Everything can be changed, even if. You know, maybe I can't stop a disease or stop a person's behavior or something like that, but I can change how I am relating to it. I can change how I feel inside, and I think that's the main thing about moving forward or having determination, is that you're not giving up on yourself. And you're understanding that even if I have no control over anything, I can still pay attention to myself and take care of my own feelings. And I can encourage myself to take that next step forward the next day, okay, I'm gonna pick myself up and I'm gonna meditate tomorrow. I'm gonna pick myself up and get back on my, health routine or my sleep routine. We all go off of our disciplines here and there, but moving forward also means that I'm moving forward towards an elevated aim, that I'm moving towards an elevated vision of myself. And in meditation, I'm looking at myself as a soul, as a point of light, a point of consciousness, living consciousness. And my nature is peace. The other aspect of that, like I said, self-respect. So that may help me to feel more peaceful about myself. It also helps me to have self-respect in that when I start to be able to feel peaceful and I notice that this peace or this experience is helping me in my life, helping me to feel a little bit better, helping me to change my behaviors, that I begin to feel a little bit better about myself. A little self-respect. I start to feel my own value that also helps me to keep going. That's also a destination. It's a journey and a destination. Self-respect is a journey and a destination. I always wanna increase my self-respect. And then finally in spirituality, we're also looking at keep moving forward in terms of my soul conscious awareness. Like I'm gonna, it's not just that I say I'm a soul and my nature is peace a couple of times. And it's not only about changing old behaviors, it's also about getting more and more lost in or involved in or developing that soul conscious awareness. I would say my experience is that developing that soul conscious awareness helps me to be more sensitive to myself and others in a very subtle way. Like I begin to be more sensitive to their needs, sensitive to maybe what they might be going through. I become more patient. I become more stable in relationships. So keep moving forward means don't let anything stop you from trying to attain that attainment, that stage. These are the spiritual rewards that we get. What are we getting? Am I getting anything? Am I getting any money? Am I getting any fame, name and fame or whatever? No, it's not about that. It's about developing myself as this benevolent, pure being. We all can do that. We get stopped easily in the beginning of the practice. So let me say that. In the beginning, we're not gonna be able to meditate, we're not gonna be able to get up, we're gonna get distracted. We might forget. We might forget for weeks or months. I, we had one student that went away for like a year and then came back. And he was like, ah, I don't feel so good. I gotta get back into this. So something remembered that he felt better when he was practicing. So practice, what does it mean keep moving forward? It means I have an aim. It means I want to heal the past, but also develop this spiritual personality and that I'm willing to put in the work. One other example, and then I'll end here about the lifestyle. I remember when we had COVID and my son was about, I don't know, 12, and he's in karate, and I remember his karate instructor was gonna close the dojo because of COVID. And I remember I called him and I said, please don't. Please don't, because we need this, we need this stability. Like we need this normalcy to help us get through this. I was very happy. He decided to keep it open. And then so we had somewhere to go or something to do at least once or twice a week, we had something to do. And that kept us like feeling normal inside. The spiritual journey, this daily routine that I'm talking about is like that. It's going to help us stay stable and stay anchored in our life while things go crazy. It also is gonna help me maintain my stability internally, and that's what I'm looking for. I'm looking to be able to maintain stability at higher and higher levels internally, get more and more patient, more and more stable, more and more calm, more and more understanding, more and more merciful view of the world, more and more caring. That's what I want, right? So I do these disciplines and I keep on working with myself. Don't stop, have determination. I'm going to get there. I'm going to continue to improve. So I'll leave it there. I know I'm talking about a spiritual journey, but of course this could be used for anything. You put in the discipline, you stick with it, whatever happens, you're building up capacity, right? But I think in spirituality, we really need these virtues right now. Kindness, peace, love, calm, patience. I think we really all need it right now. So I think it's a good idea for me anyway, to continue to practice this and share and have the benefits and not get stopped. So I'll leave it there. Remember, our slogan is Heal, Empower and Serve. And until next time, take care.
