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'll be talking about peace as a lifestyle. In the first 100 episodes of this podcast, we were looking at things from an intellectual standpoint. And the reason for that is because we have a lot of thoughts and belief systems that maybe we need to see if we wanna challenge them or check and see if we still want to use them. And the first a hundred episodes is offering different ways of looking at things based on spiritual laws and natural laws. But in this case, peace as a lifestyle. I'm not gonna talk about it, intellectually. I'm going to give just a little bit of context and then we're gonna do a practice to see if it's possible to live life in peace. We all can look and see right now. We're gonna do it right now, actually. That's all I wanted to say. So we're gonna do an exercise right now to check this out. Is it possible to live. Living and getting things done, feeling peace. So let's try it so everybody sit still and just relax the body. And we're gonna do this little exercise. It's gonna take a few minutes, maybe three or four minutes. So I want you to close your eyes and I want you to imagine when you get up in the morning, the first five minutes of your day, I'm in the bed. I am moving around. I notice that I'm in the bed. I feel the covers, and now the alarm is going off. Maybe I'm reaching for the phone. Maybe I start thinking, what day is it? I want you to start filling in the blanks. Now. What are you thinking? What are you feeling? Maybe I'm thinking, oh, my back hurts. It's my hip again, my foot. I gotta go to the doctor today. I gotta take the kids to class. I got to. I'm thinking about that as I'm getting outta the bed. I don't wanna make the bed. I'm thinking all the things that I might be thinking, by the way, you might have some other things, but the point is that this is kind of the landscape I would imagine, that we're all thinking. So I'm getting up, I'm walking to the bathroom. I don't wanna have to wake up my spouse, I got to, what time is it? Am I gonna be late for work? I go to the bathroom, then I'm washing my hands, I'm brushing my teeth. And what am I thinking as I'm brushing my teeth? What am I doing? Am I looking at my body? Am I unhappy with my body? Am I unhappy with my relationships? Do I feel frustrated? Is all of that all coming up? Maybe right in the beginning, first thing in the morning? So just play that little video for yourself right now. Briefly, what thoughts and feelings are you having when you get up in the morning, the first five minutes? I would assert that it's pretty much the same every day and you can check that for yourself. Is it the same every day? I know it was for me. Every morning you could pretty much script out the thoughts and feelings that I was gonna have. So let's that's basically the way I am living and that's how I'm starting my day. Okay, so now pause. Cut that. Cut that film cut. Now relax for a moment. Relax the body. Don't let the mind go off into any major thought processes at the moment, and just bring yourself into this peaceful awareness. I'm a soul and my nature is peace. If you like, you can imagine the point of light here in the forehead. You can imagine a peaceful nature scene. Whatever makes you feel peaceful. A student said yesterday when she looks up at the sun, she feels peaceful like the ray of the sun or coming and helping her or something. So whatever the visualization or whatever the feeling, generate a feeling of peace inside yourself right now. And now I want you to replay that same part of your day in your mind's eye right now, but I want you to imagine that you're doing all of those same exact actions, but all you're saying to yourself is, I'm a soul, and by nature is peace. And you're visualizing maybe that visualization you have. Maybe it's a nature visualization or something, that feeling that makes you feel peaceful. That's all you're thinking about. So you're in the bed, you wake up, I'm a soul. My nature is peace. I move the covers. I'm a soul. This is my body. I'm alive, I'm moving. Maybe I could say something about what's happening. You know, I'm a soul. My nature is peace. I am peaceful. I'm happy to be alive. I'm here. Everything's okay. Everything's good. I'm walking to the bathroom. I'm brushing my teeth. I'm a soul. My nature is peace. Okay, so we can stop that. Now. What am I pointing to here? The episode is called Peace as a Lifestyle. When we talk about lifestyle, most of the time we're talking about the physical things that we're doing, and maybe my lifestyle includes meditation and going to the meditation center or going to church, or maybe my lifestyle includes going to nightclubs and drinking, and maybe my lifestyle includes being a business person or being a healthcare professional, or being a crack addict or being, there could be all kinds of lifestyles that we could do. But when we talk about lifestyle, we're almost always talking about the external lifestyle. So in a spiritual sense, what I'm sharing today is that whatever your lifestyle. It doesn't matter what the outside lifestyle is, it is possible to change the internal experience. It's possible to shift from whatever is there currently to peace. Ask yourself now if I was to be working on the computer. So imagine that you're working on your computer. What's going on in your mind while you're working on the computer? Maybe I have this feeling like I gotta get this done, I gotta get this done, I gotta get this done. And that feeling is going through my body. It's creating hormones and chemicals and stimulation of the nervous system and so forth. Those thoughts and feelings are creating a cascade effect in my physical body also. So I'm doing the activity, I'm doing that action. So now, scratch that. Now imagine. I'm doing the exact same action, typing everything same. But internally, I say to myself, I'm a soul. My nature is peace. I'm God's child. Everything is good, everything is fine. Are we ready for that kind of silence? Are we ready for that kind of lifestyle? I would say that we should start getting ready for that kind of lifestyle. I feel that we have done a lot of work on ourselves based on fear. Fear of this happening, fear of that happening, so I better get stronger or I better get, healthier or I better get this, or I better get that. And it's all external. It's all this kind of active energy, externally focused energy. What I'm focusing on today is whatever is going on for you, whatever the activity is, even right now as I'm speaking, the body is moving and I'm making an effort to remember that I'm a soul as I'm speaking. I'm not only remembering that I'm a soul, I'm remembering that I'm speaking to other souls, and I'm also aware that what I'm telling you is something that I know works and I've done it. So I have a, if you wanna say some authority of experience that I'm bringing to the table, also, I'm aware of that also, and I want to share it, right? So is it possible that I could do, just pick one activity, let's say washing dishes. If I'm washing the dishes, what am I thinking about while I'm washing the dishes, I can tell you what I was thinking about or what I sometimes maybe still do. I gotta hurry up. I gotta hurry up. I don't really wanna do this. I don't really wanna do this. Blah, blah, blah. That's what's going on in my head. Does that have to be there in order for me to wash the dishes? Will my hands not work? Won't my hands still work? If I tell myself I'm a peaceful soul, everything is fine. I'm happy. It's all good. Now, again, let me underline this again. If you're hearing this and you are saying there's no way that that's gonna work, forget it. I recommend go back to the first a hundred episodes. The reason why this is set up this way, the first 100 episodes is all about challenging, seeing and challenging all the stuff that's going on in the background that's generating fear and arrogance and worry and irritation. It's attempting to see it and organize it and bring spiritual knowledge and natural law and spiritual laws to bear on all of those things that maybe we grew up with and picked up along the way. But if you've done some of that work and now you're ready, you're like, okay, look, I'm ready to start getting control of my mind. I'm ready to start living like an angel living, like a natural human being, not just talking about it. You know, I grew up. I, well, a lot of us did, with this religious background. This is right, this is wrong, this is evil, this is good, this is bad. And I'm not gonna talk about that like that it's not good or bad, but we, it was always external. It was always external. There was no instruction on how to be peaceful inside. Sometimes it was like, oh, just believe in God or pray, or. But in my experience, it was kind of like you're on your own. So the piece of spiritual knowledge that I'm sharing now is that whatever is going on physically, it is not interfering with your mental state. You can create whatever mental state you like. You have that power. If the other stuff feels too strong that it needs to be broken up and seen and worked out. That's why, like I said, the first a hundred episodes is there, so we can work on that. We can face the mind, we can get it under control, but once we do some of that work now it's like, okay, yeah, I'm ready. I want to change this. So let's practice one more time. Let's imagine that I'm cooking dinner for myself. My family. Let's say I got the family going, I got the whatever time it is, whatever's going on in your household. So just bring that up in your mind's eye and imagine what it's like to do that Normally, am I reacting to what's going on? Am I reacting to the kids? Am I reacting to my spouse? Am I reacting to the time there's not enough time? Do I have some physical discomfort? Do I feel hungry? Do I feel tired? Is there all these kinds of stimuli coming through and what's going on in my mind? Maybe I'm fighting this one off, fighting that one off, dealing with this, telling myself, oh, try to be nice or maybe I'm not even telling myself that maybe I'm screaming at my kid. My internal world is so painful. Right. So let's just a minute, take a minute and look at that for yourself. What is it normally like? What's the inner landscape normally like in my mind when I'm cooking dinner. For me, it's a little something like, overwhelmed, don't have enough time. I really don't feel like doing this. Something like that. Maybe that is there. I don't have young children around, I don't have right now, so maybe that wouldn't be there, but if it is, bring that into the scenario. Okay, now cut that. Cut. And now we're gonna replay it and now we're gonna play that same scenario. But now imagine that the same external situation is there exactly the same, but I'm telling myself that I am a peaceful soul. I am a peaceful soul. Everything's fine. My kid comes up and starts screaming, and I can turn to the child and say. Mommy's cooking, whatever, and remain calm, remain peaceful. I'm a peaceful soul. I don't need to be reacting to what's going on around me. Everything's fine, and if it's not fine, I can say I can stop doing it. If I can't get control over myself, I can always stop doing that. That's an option. I can ask for help. I can ask for support calmly. I may not get it, but I can ask for it. Or I can rearrange what I'm doing to help myself so I can work on that, but my peace is gonna be protected. My peace is going to be generated and protected. I'm a soul. My nature is peace. I'm not getting excited anymore. And when I do that, so imagine that right now. Can you imagine being that peaceful, being like that during that activity? It is possible. What I want you to see today's episode is that it is possible. That the physical activity is not preventing you from feeling peaceful. We can practice this very simple practice when you're brushing your teeth, practice when you're getting dressed, practice, when you're washing dishes, practice when you're on the computer. Try to remember, okay, Dr. Anne said I can do this action. Let me, let me try. For five minutes, I'm gonna try. I'm a soul. My nature is peace. Now lemme try to do the action and see what happens. What happens is you're changing your whole life. You're changing your whole inner experience of being alive. I'm gonna leave it there because it's peace as a lifestyle. So what does that mean? It means that you have a lifestyle, but you feel peace. Whatever's going on on the outside. Give it a try. What I'd like you to do is try it in a very small period of time in an activity that you are doing all the time. Just try and show yourself, prove it to yourself that it is possible to do actions in my life right now and remain peaceful. So I will leave it there. I hope that that gave you something to try this week. And so our slogan is Heal, empower, and Serve. And until next time. Take care.
