Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] We Americans enjoy a wonderful and powerful way of life, but internally and in relationships, we may wish for better.
[00:00:13] Join me as we look beneath the surface and gain insights to transform every aspect of your life.
[00:00:21] My name is Dr. Ann O' Hare, and this is the Spiritual American.
[00:00:26] Foreign hello, everyone, and welcome to the Spiritual American.
[00:00:33] My name is Dr. Ann O' Hare, and I'm your host. And today we'll be talking about practical spirituality.
[00:00:42] Hoping to reach out to some of you out there who maybe aren't into the normal way of thinking about spirituality. Maybe will be a little intriguing and interested.
[00:00:52] So, practical spirituality. So I wrote down a couple of things here. When we hear the word spirituality, what do we usually think of?
[00:01:01] Some people think of religion, the typical religions, the formal religions that are out there. You have Christianity, you have Hinduism, you have Muslim, you have Judaism, you have. There's other ones out there too, like worship of nature, but those are the main ones, right? And so when I think about spirituality, maybe I think of religions or maybe I think of God and religion, that kind of thing. The second thing is maybe I think of spirituality more like not religious and more like philosophical or exploration of different practices like meditation, like crystals, astrology. There's all different things that go at like maybe singing bowls or vibrational healing, or there's all kinds of subtle, energetic practices and disciplines out there that maybe people are exploring and consider that to be more spiritual, more energetic, versus the typical religious structure.
[00:02:19] For this conversation, I would like to talk about spirituality as the science of consciousness.
[00:02:28] So it's spiritual science. And the reason that it's practical is because when we understand how the soul and the mind and everything works, we are able to master that mechanism and actually change our experience.
[00:02:44] So I wrote down here.
[00:02:47] Oh, the other thing that people might think of as spiritual is like going off and being a nun or a monk or maybe what we call a sannyasi or a yogi, like going and living in a cave somewhere or like a guru, maybe we think of that as spiritual. Or even spirituality could also be seen as silence or prayer or something very sacred could also be seen as spirituality. So those are the things I think mainly we think of when we think of spiritual. But here I'm going to start with the premise that I am a spirit.
[00:03:24] So sometimes it's funny because we say, oh, I want to live a spiritual lifestyle. And I say, well, you're a spirit, so maybe your lifestyle is not spiritual. But what does that mean? So I think if we look at it logically, and this is what I Mean by practical? It's very logical. I'm gonna explain what I mean like step by step and see if it makes sense.
[00:03:49] First thing is I am a soul, I am a spirit, I am a soul. I am living consciousness just like every other soul.
[00:03:58] And I'm using this body to express myself, to live my life, to have experiences just like everyone else.
[00:04:06] I'm a human being. I'm a soul and a body human being together that works together. That's a human being.
[00:04:14] So that's the first point of truth. Second point of truth is that my nature is peace.
[00:04:22] So the soul, I. The soul, the. My nature is peace.
[00:04:28] My nature is love. My nature is wisdom, purity, bliss, benevolence.
[00:04:38] That's my nature as a soul.
[00:04:41] So the question might be, why is it that I don't feel blissful and peaceful and wise and all this most of the time? And it's because we have this thing called our mind.
[00:04:52] And we have this mechanism whereby we're able to record things into the mind. We're able to use them as references. We're able to create principles and perceptions and contexts within ourself. And that's how we perceive things and that's how we make decisions. And then whatever decisions or whatever we do is going to create our experience and our life.
[00:05:23] That's what's happening.
[00:05:24] It's funny, I was talking yesterday about the power to tolerate. We were talking about it and we were talking about a tree.
[00:05:33] And if you have a tree, let's say you have an apple tree. And underneath the apple tree you have like the pope, a serial killer and a police officer. Let's say the tree is going to give apples to everybody.
[00:05:46] The tree doesn't see any difference. The tree gives the fruit and somebody takes it.
[00:05:53] So there's no difference.
[00:05:55] What I'm talking about now in terms of practical spirituality or the science of consciousness, this mechanism of the mind and how it affects our perceptions and how we use it and how we make memories and how we create experiences is happening regardless if it's positive, negative, happy, sad, it's the same mechanism.
[00:06:20] So this is very practical. This is a good thing to know.
[00:06:23] Because if I know how something works, then I can use it to my advantage. I can create positive outcomes then.
[00:06:33] The issue with the mind, however, is that when we try to start meditating, a lot of times we're not used to facing what's in our mind. And maybe there's a lot of painful, negative, chaotic, active, not wanting to be peaceful, resistant, self critical things in the mind so when I'm talking about practical spirituality, I'm not talking about any particular modality except meditation.
[00:07:07] Because meditation is the practice of looking at myself, looking at my mind. You need courage to do that.
[00:07:15] All of us, I'm going to assert now that all of us have negative thoughts, self critical thoughts, painful thoughts, memories, contexts that maybe are painful or maybe alienate relationships or cause problems. Maybe we make bad decisions behaviorally. Maybe we have addictions and we can't get over them.
[00:07:39] So the reason it's called practical spirituality is because we're practically trying to change, not change myself, the essence of myself, but actually get in touch with the essence of myself so that the rest of this other stuff can change.
[00:07:58] So I wrote here, I have a mind and I have to deal with it. So what's going on in the mind? I have thoughts, I have feelings, I have behaviors are affected by the way I think, like I said. And then I have experiences. And what is all this add up to everything that I'm talking about right now? I'm talking about the mind. But isn't that how our life is created?
[00:08:27] It's funny, this is something that we may have never thought about, but we are living our whole life in our mind.
[00:08:35] Our whole life is lived in our mind. We have a body and we're doing things. Of course we have physical experiences also. But the memory of those experiences is in the mind.
[00:08:45] The happiness that's felt during those experiences is felt in the mind.
[00:08:52] The pain, disappointment, regret, guilt is all experienced in the mind. Something happened physically, but the experience of it is in the mind.
[00:09:05] So our life is experienced in the mind.
[00:09:11] Think about that for a minute.
[00:09:14] Do I know what's going on in my own mind?
[00:09:18] Am I in control of my own mind? Am I afraid of my mind?
[00:09:22] In practical spirituality, what I'm looking to do is I'm looking to face my own mind.
[00:09:30] I'm not blaming anybody else. I'm not blaming the external circumstances. There were circumstances, there are relationships, things did happen. But what I'm holding in my mind is up to me.
[00:09:44] Now does that mean I'm going to be able to snap my fingers and have it all be perfect in one minute? No, because that's not how it works. I remember one time one of my teachers actually said to me, you can't fix the self.
[00:09:58] You can't fix the self. That was a big deal for me because I also had this idea that everything had to be fixed and figured out and so forth. But with meditation, when we start looking at our mind, you have to look at it and be generous and be patient. I use the term merciful self observation.
[00:10:19] Merciful self observation. That's the first step.
[00:10:24] So why is this practical? Because this is the only part of me that I can really work with.
[00:10:33] Let's test that out. What about the body? Do I have control over my body? Well, yes, I have control over what I eat. I have control over my daily routine, maybe exercise and so forth, but. But do I have control over the organs inside my body? What? I mean, people have heart attacks.
[00:10:52] People get diseases all the time.
[00:10:55] I'm sure they didn't wake up and say, oh, I want to have a heart attack today.
[00:10:59] They're not in control of that. The body is not really in our control.
[00:11:04] We can control our behavior, but what happens in the body, it's happening on its own.
[00:11:10] Wow. Right?
[00:11:13] The circumstances in life, anything could happen right now.
[00:11:17] You know, sometimes we say dramatically, oh, the roof could cave in. But I mean, literally, it could happen. It's unlikely, but it could happen. Why am I saying that? Because the external world is, for the most part, out of my control.
[00:11:34] So if I say to you right now, practical spirituality means that you have the aim to get control of your mind, what's your first response to that?
[00:11:45] Is that something that you'd like to have control over the mind?
[00:11:50] Is it something that's scary? Is it something that you think, oh, well, that's not going to happen. My mind is fine?
[00:11:57] We don't often understand how important the mind is and how our mind is affecting our life.
[00:12:07] How I feel about myself, how I feel about everybody else.
[00:12:13] It was one example of the kids being at home without the parents.
[00:12:19] As soon as the parents are gone, the kids are going crazy. Or there's the example of the genie that you got to give the genie something to do. If you don't give the genie boundaries or discipline, the genie will destroy you. So the mind is kind of like that.
[00:12:35] I don't want to say it's going to destroy you, but it certainly will be influenced by something.
[00:12:41] In spirituality, what we're trying to do is we're trying to influence the mind with spiritual truth. I am a soul. My nature is peace.
[00:12:52] Everyone is a soul. We're all playing our parts here as human beings.
[00:12:58] My nature is benevolence. My nature is happiness, loving.
[00:13:06] When I start practicing that, I'm starting to recalibrate. If you want to say, beginning the recalibration of my mind, starting with, who am I?
[00:13:16] When I do that, I'm setting up A new idea of myself that little by little will start showing up practically in my life.
[00:13:26] We have one student who. This happened twice, actually, but one student I'll share. She's practicing the meditation and she's learning the knowledge and so forth. And she was in the middle of a fight with her husband.
[00:13:38] And she realized in the middle of the fight, well, I'm supposed to be peaceful.
[00:13:43] Why am I yelling?
[00:13:45] And she just sat down and was quiet, didn't say another word. Her husband was like, whoa, what is going on?
[00:13:55] But he sat down next to her and they sorted it out. I felt this way. I felt this way. I was upset about this. I was upset about this. And then he made her dinner. Supposedly she shared, but that was a sweet ending to the story. But what's the lesson? The lesson here is that practical spirituality means that I am using the mechanisms that are already there. Very practical. I don't have to learn anything else except what's how this works. Once I learn how this works, the mind, memories, experiences and everything, how it affects my perceptions and behaviors and thinking patterns and feelings.
[00:14:35] Once I learn that, I begin to tell myself spiritual information to start to transform that system.
[00:14:42] And what is the result of that? Practical result.
[00:14:46] After two weeks of practicing this meditation, anger was completely gone.
[00:14:52] Practical result. That student stopped the fight with her husband.
[00:14:56] We've had other people say, I'm able to watch my thoughts throughout the day.
[00:15:02] Things aren't bothering me as much as they used to. We're providing a little bit of objectivity and also that self observation, mind observation. A little bit of space between me and the mind, a little bit of space so that I can see what's going on. And then little by little, I become the master of my mind.
[00:15:25] You could call that practical spirituality. The reason why it's spiritual is because we're using that spirit, that idea that I am a spirit, as the zero point, as the zero point of this process.
[00:15:40] It is true whether I'm remembering it or not.
[00:15:44] It's true for everybody, whether they're aware of it or not.
[00:15:48] We're all souls and our nature is peace.
[00:15:52] And this is something that I can realize. And that peace and that understanding, that experience and memory of peace and understanding that that's who I am in essence begins to have an impact on the rest of that internal system.
[00:16:10] I can give many, many examples of different decisions that I made based on this practice.
[00:16:16] My decision making began to change, My reactivity began to decrease. And I've been able to transform all areas of my life, health family, work, everything.
[00:16:32] It's all here.
[00:16:34] Practical. It's all here, right here. And we all have access. We just need some information.
[00:16:40] We need a discipline we need to practice.
[00:16:43] And a little faith and courage and the heart to want to, let's say, get better or to be the master.
[00:16:54] So I'll leave it there. I hope that gave you a lot to think about and remember. Our slogan is heal, empower and serve.
[00:17:03] And until next time, take care of.
