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 living beyond limitations. Very interesting topic. It's kind of almost a part two from the last episode, which was about ego. And so we're going to talk a little bit about how we can move beyond our limitations. If you watch the last episode we were saying that ego is like a mini I a mini self that has learned a lot of stuff and there's a there's a saying in our spiritual study. It's like a mouse who gets a piece of cheese and thinks he's the grocer You know thinks he owns the grocery store It's kind of like that. The ego understands a little bit of something and then it thinks it's running the whole show. We know that ego is a problem or becomes a problem because it gets attached to what it knows and then defends it or gets upset when other people say different things. It's very attached It has devices associated with it and so forth, but we're gonna talk today about living beyond Limitations and the limitations I wrote down here. When do you feel limitations or where do you think limitations come from? People may say that limitations come from outside like financial limitations, physical limitations, things like that. And that's valid. But the limitation I'm talking about is the internal limitation. Limitation of emotional addiction or emotional, overload or something like that. Or a limitation of maybe not being in control of the mind, which is affecting decision making, and affecting your health, and affecting your relationships and so forth. So those limitations I'm talking about today. So I wrote here. The self without limitations is soul consciousness. So before in the last episode, it was like ego. Ego would be a limited self. So if I was to have an unlimited self, I would call that soul consciousness. And what do I mean by unlimited self? I am, and you've heard me say this before, I am living energy. I am the soul. Spiritual being, this body is here as an instrument to help me express myself. It's a very powerful instrument and a very sensitive one, but it's not me. I'm the one using it to express myself, and to live my life and have experiences. So that's the self beyond limitations is soul consciousness. So I wrote here, what is life beyond limitations? The only way that I can describe this is from my own experience and in my own experience in my spiritual path in the Brahma Kumaris and Raja Yoga meditation, we start living a spiritual lifestyle. So I'm going to share a little bit about the spiritual lifestyle that we live because as I am living this lifestyle this simplicity, studying, meditation, and so forth. I'm changing the landscape of my inner world. So let me tell you a little bit about the daily routine that we practice. So we get up early in the morning, practice meditation between 3 and 5 a. m. You don't have to get up that early if you're not already getting up that early. For new people we say, for new students we say, set your alarm 30 minutes earlier so you get a chance to meditate before your day begins. That kind of thing. But we get up early in the morning and spend an hour or two meditating. Then we study. So we have a daily class, which we're studying spiritual knowledge. And then, you go throughout your day and throughout the day, I'm trying to work on whatever I was studying this morning and I'm doing little mini meditations. We call throughout the day, like stop what you're doing, remind myself that I'm a soul. So my study doesn't stop in the morning. I'm continually working on it throughout the day. In the evening, we do another meditation which is based on world service, so I'm feeling peaceful or loving or benevolent, and I'm sharing those feelings with the whole world through my mind. So that's the evening meditation. Then, evening routine, go to bed and run the day through your mind at the end of the day to get some insights and to see how you did with all your efforts throughout the day. How does that help me live a life beyond limitations? I'm beginning to watch myself. I'm watching myself in meditation. I'm watching my mind. I'm learning, I'm studying and I'm watching myself throughout the day. I'm shifting my awareness to do those little mini meditations. I'm practicing world service in the evening. And I'm also at the, at nighttime, I'm watching my day and I'm observing myself without judgment. And I'm beginning to get an idea of who I am and how I'm behaving and what's going on. Like in the evening, day review before bed. There might be a moment where, oh wow, I was really selfish there, or I could have done better there, or wow, I did better there, I was much calmer. You're able to watch yourself without judgment. Part of living life without limitation is being able to observe yourself. And I like this term that I thought of one day, merciful self observation. Merciful self observation. that I'm watching myself. There's the scientific principle that when something is watched, it changes its functioning. As soon as you have something and as soon as somebody is watching it, it actually changes just from being watched. It changes. So observing myself by observing myself, I'm shifting the consciousness of myself. I'm getting away from a limited view. Like I'm inside the my life and I'm inside my world and I am, struggling with this or dealing with this or dealing with that too. I'm taking a kind of a external view of myself. Now in order to do that, I have to have a self out here, right? So we talked about the ego versus the real self that the spiritual self, the eternal self. So I am the soul and I'm watching myself. Here's the other thing. The merciful part means that I care. I'm actually trying to get better. The limitations come when I'm stuck in one old way of thinking or another behaviors come from that decision making comes from that. Sorrow comes from that. Confusion comes from that. I want to say anxiety and depression are more symptoms of that. And here we are taking medication and we're doing the best we can. We're all doing the best we can to try to break free of those experiences. I'm going to call those all, they're all limited experiences. They're all limitations. We're stuck somewhere in our consciousness. We're stuck So when we practice a spiritual lifestyle, we're automatically turning on that merciful self observation. Soon as I start observing myself, something relaxes. Because I'm not so tight in it anymore, I'm actually, it loosens it up, it gives some space between me and the thing. I'm sure you've experienced this. Where maybe when you're in a situation, you feel different than if you had a friend who was in the situation and you're outside of it and you can see differently. You can see it better. You can actually give advice. You can see the beginning, middle, and end of the situation. And that person can't, maybe because they're emotionally invested. So as I'm practicing this merciful self observation, I'm becoming less emotionally invested. Which is good. Does that mean I don't care? Or does that mean I'm not participating? No, it actually means I can participate better because I'm not reacting. And you could put that to the test in your own life. Pick a situation where you were reacting emotionally, and pick, then pick a situation where there was a problem, but for some reason you weren't that emotionally invested, and you were able to see the problem and work it out no problem. It's much better to be able to work the problem out. To feel helpless and reacting. I know for myself that one of the limited things that I'm really working on now to remove is this thing where if something goes wrong, I'm reacting to the thing going wrong. Like the computer doesn't work and I'm reacting, or I'm trying not to react externally. But internally, I'm very uncomfortable and I'm really trying to work on that to release it like, because I'm really not in any danger. So I'm reacting to this thing. It's funny because as I was thinking about that personality trait that I'm talking about, it has its own justification. Like I can justify it. Oh, look how things are today. It didn't used to be this way. Look how many times I have to call customer service again. I can complain, right? Think about how many things in your life maybe we complain about. Complaining creates limitation. Complaining is a symptom of us being limited inside. And we feel trapped. So I'm complaining about it. Somebody will listen to me so I can feel like I get some space. Why am I complaining? Cause I want space. So merciful self observation, even if I'm complaining, let me observe myself complaining. Eventually I don't want to complain. Eventually I want to be able to be calm, be able to handle something one way or the other. Doesn't mean that I'm bowing down to life or letting life beat me or something like that. As a matter of fact, I'm becoming the master. Because I'm no longer emotionally crippled in the situation or mentally crippled in the situation in the sense that the mind won't stop. It'll be one thing or another it's I'm worried I'm questioning I'm confused I'm this I'm that is then the anxiety comes the depression comes and also so at those moments I'm not the master of my life So having a little bit of detachment, that merciful self observation, why am I saying merciful? Let there be love in there. Let there be the intention that I'm going to get better, that I'm going to feel powerful, that I'm going to maintain my authenticity. I'm going to maintain the things that I really care about. Sometimes when we talk about detachment or something like that, people get nervous because it feels scary to be detached, or maybe it feels cold or uncaring. I find in my experience that caring comes from deep within the heart. And when I am detaching from all those upsets, I'm actually more in touch with my heart. I'm more in touch with my feelings. And I'm more able to be compassionate or caring than if I was reacting to the situation. So, the last thing I want to add here is about self respect. So, one of the things that I've noticed is that when I'm emotional or reacting or even having extra mental activity, I don't really feel good about myself. Now, in the past, I didn't know that there was an option. Because I figured this is the way life is and you just have to deal with it. You have to deal with yourself somehow and that's it. I didn't realize that there was another option Working in spirituality and making this spiritual effort. I have for 14 years I've been telling myself every day. I'm a soul I'm eternal. I'm a living being. I'm the living consciousness. My nature is peace. I've been telling myself that for 14 years. I've been studying spiritual knowledge. I've been doing this kind of teaching and sharing and service and things like that for 14 years. So doing that for long enough, my self respect begins to shift. I no longer fully identify myself with all my human experiences. I actually have spiritual experiences to draw upon now. As I'm sitting here talking to you, I'm aware. See, as I'm saying the words, I'm aware of it, even if I don't say it, but I'm aware that I am the soul speaking and also that I'm trying to help. Like I'm trying to share something valuable. I'm aware of that. So I'm not doing it for any other reason. I don't make any money on this podcast. I'm not asking anybody for anything. I don't know anybody's name out there. I'm not asking for any money or any information. So my awareness is that I, the soul, am here and I have something to share based on my human experience, but also based on my spiritual experiences. So that self respect is so different than what I had before, which you could say self respect or some kind of self esteem based on maybe education or relationship or body or whatever, all of which changes or all of which is also under the risk of being attacked. but nobody can attack my spiritual truth. I mean, you can, you could tell me I'm not a soul and I'm like, okay, you know, there's something about the spiritual aspect of this practice. And this is gets back to the initial thing, which is living beyond limitations. Soul consciousness brings us into a self respect that's beyond ordinary life. And it also is impenetrable by ordinary life. Once it's built up enough, it takes time because we're so used to identifying with all this other, all these other things that it takes time to build up. But I'm here to say that over time, if we practice every day meditation, start telling ourselves the truth about ourself, start learning about the different aspects of spirituality and the spiritual laws, like the law of karma, how does karma work? Go back to the episodes on karma. We did two episodes on karma in this podcast. Go back and listen to those and see how does that work? We talked about discernment. We talked about all different kinds of aspects of using spirituality practically in my life. When I use spirituality practically in my life, while retraining myself and telling myself who I am and having experiences, I start to have this new sense of self. I'm here to say it's not fully spiritual yet all the time. I'm work in progress. I'm still like, sometimes I'm still working on this. I'm still working on that personality trait or this person out, but I have a committed, detached kind of merciful self that's there now. And that self respect is so wonderful and so powerful. And I'm going to call that unlimited because it has nothing to do with my name, my body, my family, my country, my anything, age, nothing. Education has nothing to do with that has to do with who I really am. And that's really the truth of who all of us really are. And that's why we're doing this service because I want to share my experiences. But also if you listen to these episodes, over and over again, you're going to start to change the way you think. Maybe I don't have to think so ordinary. Maybe I don't have to think in a painful way. Maybe I don't have to think negative. Maybe I can try something else. And that's what a spiritual practice does. It changes our way of thinking about ourself and about the world from one thing to another. And it can be unlimited, powerful, beautiful, generous. So I'll leave it there. I hope that that gave you. Something to think about. Many of you are already practicing religion or another, or a spiritual practice, and that's fine. I guess what I'm hoping for is within that, maybe consider that maybe there's more to discover about yourself, that there's an unlimited experience that we can have. So I'll leave it there. Remember our slogan is heal, empower, and serve. And until next time, take care. Um, uh,
