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. Today we're gonna have a little fun. If you have been listening to the podcast, maybe you know that I am very much into explaining things and making them make sense. Lately I've been doing more kind of right brain things. If you get to know me, also, I do like to do creative things, like make acronyms out of things or do PowerPoints or write poems or things like that. So today's topic is the Sound of God, and I'm gonna play a game with an acronym today. So if I had to ask you, what is the sound of God, what would be the first word that comes to mind? And I would say for me, the first word that comes to mind is silence. I'm gonna put the word silence here. Silence. So I thought to myself, what is a nice way to talk about God? And I thought we would use the word silence as an acronym. So we're gonna start with s. S is for soul, so God is a soul. Maybe we had lots of different ideas about God before and in spirituality we start to understand that I'm a soul, so I am living consciousness. I could say I'm a point of light, like there's a point of light behind me here. Meaning that I am a unique singular consciousness. Nobody can be me. I can't be anybody else, but I'm energy. I'm living energy. I'm using this body, but I'm not the body. I'm distinct from the body. I'm always with it, but I'm distinct from it. I'm the one moving the hand. I'm not the hand, right? So God is a soul also. So I'm a point of consciousness. I'm a singular, unique consciousness. So is God. God is a singular, unique consciousness. Another point of light. Very interesting to think of God as a, as a soul, right? So I'm a soul, God's a soul. So then we go into a little bit more about God. So I, so we're spelling out silence. So I, I means in corporeal. So that means that God doesn't have a body. How do we explain that? Well, God's a soul. God exists as a soul. He's living awareness, living self-aware consciousness, and he doesn't take a body like human beings do, so that makes him not human. Is that an interesting thought? Think about that for a second. So, God. Is a soul. So I am like God in the sense that I'm a soul. And this is where when we say I'm God's child, or God created us in his image, what image? The soul. So I am living consciousness. So is God, but God is not human. And this is where sometimes we get into trouble when we talk about God in the sense of, you know, God is jealous. God is angry. God is mad at me. God made this happen. God didn't make this happen. Why did God punish me? I'm mad at God. That kind of thing. God doesn't have a human awareness. He's the pure, powerful, living, blissful consciousness. So he doesn't have all of those things. He doesn't have that kind of involvement. He's in corporeal. Now, for us, we are corporeal beings. We are, we have soul and body. We're human beings. We are corporeal beings. So for us, we have the soul side of us, but we also have the human side, meaning I have a name, I have a place that I live, I have a family, and so forth. God doesn't have any of that. God's not male or female. Interesting to think of, right? Because we're so used to thinking of things in human terms, and we have definitely attributed human attributes to God. And also in the east, sometimes nature gets attributed to God. Different animals, different qualities of nature. They used to worship the sun and worship the moon. That doesn't mean that nature is not important. Nature is very important and nature is our home here. Right? But it's not God in the sense that God is like us, like souls different. So in corporeal, God is in corporeal. He's not a human being. L versus SILL. Loving, loving. Sometimes we say the ocean of love and one way, you know. I don't know if anybody's gonna pick this up, but this meant something to me when I thought of it. Imagine that you wanted the answer to who is God? Like you really wanted the answer and you found a box, and the box has the word God on it, and you know you accept that whatever is in the box. That's how God is like, you accept it, this is it. Whatever is in that box, that's how God is, and you open the box and you find out that He's good. He's loving. We say He 'cause it's the like we relate to God like a father, but God is not male or female, but the quality of God is good. The quality of God is loving. The quality of God is benevolent, positive. It has a positive, loving quality to God. That made a difference to me because there's so many different ideas about God out there. And like I said, giving these human attributes and human emotions and stuff to God. Also, another idea about God is God is everywhere. I mean, I can understand why people would think that because that's a way of, making God unlimited, right? If God is in the tree and God is in the air, and God is in then in myself and somewhere inside me, I think, oh, that means that He's great or He's unlimited, or God is unlimited. But in spirituality, we understand that it's not that God is everywhere. It's that God has an unlimited awareness. Unlimited awareness, pure awareness. In the East, they say God is Sat, Chit, Anand. Sat means the truth. Chit means awareness, consciousness. Anand means blissful. So that's the quality. That's a singular consciousness. So God is a soul with a singular consciousness. He has a loving, benevolent nature. He's in corporeal. And then E. Eternal. Eternal. No beginning and no end. How does that feel when we say that? Sometimes the analytical mind doesn't wanna accept that. When we start talking about spiritual truth and spirituality. We're not talking about time-based phenomenon anymore. We're talking about beyond time we're talking about existence. For instance, love. Love doesn't have any time attached to it. It doesn't have any place or physical structure attached to it. It exists in the sense that we experience it, right? So sometimes we say in the spiritual knowledge that the soul cannot be seen, but it can be understood. This can be experienced, eternal, can be experienced. There was an episode a few episodes ago about Forever Consciousness. That's the idea. So the Forever Consciousness, eternal Consciousness means that I don't have any awareness of time or space or matter. Eternal. God is eternal. Soul is eternal. Also, remember everything we're saying about God, it also is true for the soul except that soul is human also. God is not right. So that's the thing. God never leaves His pure perfect awareness. We come down and we play our parts down here. That's fine. We play our parts in matter and that's good. God loves us anyway. It's okay. It's not like it makes us better or worse. We're his children, right. Okay. N natural. So for me, I like to use the word natural because sometimes we attribute good and bad, right and wrong with God. That if one person believes this and doesn't believe that, then something's gonna happen to them. My understanding and the understanding of this knowledge is that it's more like a natural phenomenon. Souls are natural. Like for instance, and naturally giving and naturally participating. Like let's say you have a tree, and this is a good example. So you have a tree, and the tree is making fruit. Let's say it's an apple tree and you have underneath the tree, you have a very good person and you have a very bad person. I don't wanna say what they are, but let's say a. A clearly a a negative person, maybe a very violent person, and then you have a very holy person or a good person. The tree's gonna give shade oxygen and the apples to both. There's something natural and universal about soul consciousness. Even in our soul conscious vision. If I can. Generate a soul conscious vision, it's actually a common denominator that everyone's a soul, so all human beings are souls, so therefore, all the differences become secondary. I can choose whether or not to relate to somebody as male or female, or tall or short, or this or that. I can choose. And I can also choose to look at them like a soul. A child of God, the naturalness of things, the universality of our experience as souls on earth, as playing our parts as human beings. So all of it is natural and God is natural too. Naturally exists. See. C, compassionate, compassionate. So I also like the word benevolent. Compassionate also means that you understand where they're coming from. So you could say, God understands our predicament here. So even though God remains beyond time and space and it remains beyond, remains pure does not incur karma like we do. Like all this problems and things that we accumulate and stuff, God does not do that. He remains pure. Because God is aware, has unlimited awareness, he also has unlimited knowledge, so He knows what's going on. So when you know everything and you know yourself and you're never stepping down off of your self-respect, you never forget who you are, then you would be benevolent, you would be generous, you would be patient, compassionate. It's like an example I use sometimes is when you're a parent. And let's say your child throws himself on the floor and starts having a tantrum. You as the parent don't fall on the floor and have a tantrum, right? No. You remain beyond. Hopefully you remain calm. You remain calm while the situation is unfolding. That's God God's remaining calm and remaining himself, and remaining benevolent, and remaining all knowing, and all, all knowledge, and all powers, remaining like that. While this is all playing out, compassionate. And then the last one, I kind of went in different directions on this, but I wasn't sure which way to go with this. But I think I'm gonna go with E. I think I'm gonna go with Essence full. Essence full, like pure God is the pure essence. So you could, you could look at him, you could look at God like the unlimited ocean source of all these qualities and all these powers. You could also look at God as the pure example of all these qualities. So he's essence full. God is essence the essence, the essence of the soul. God is pure purity. So silence. He's a God, is a soul, incorporeal, loving, eternal, natural, compassionate, and essence full. What does this mean? The sound of God? I mean, does God make a sound? God lives in silence. You hear people talking about, you know, God spoke to me, God. God gave me a message. It's silent. It's in their own mind. They're experiencing something in their own mind. So God doesn't make a physical sound, but God reveals himself. Himself, but it's not a him, right? I keep saying that, but God is revealed through the qualities of God. And we have those same qualities. All of us God's children have the same qualities as God. So you could say revealing God is about generating those qualities. Knowing who God is is very important. It's almost like we're orphans and we don't know. I don't know who my parents are. You know, I'm an orphan and then I'm, maybe I'm a spiritual orphan, let's say. Sometimes we say that in this knowledge, we say that, that we're spiritual orphans. And then when we realize that we're souls, so the first step is to say, I'm a soul. That's the first step. Because I'm not, I'm not this body, and I'm not Anne, and I'm not, I mean, I'm playing Anne. It's not like Anne is bad, it's just I'm here. But there's more to me. In essence, I'm actually this living being, I'm living consciousness. So this understanding and this awareness and this experience, I am a soul, is the first step. So I am a soul, and then I start to understand who God is in terms of qualities, in terms of His, in terms of God's position, beyond time, not human, a soullike me. So that connection, I'm able to connect. If I know who God is, I'm able to direct my mind and my intellect in that direction, and then pay attention there. But I have to think of myself as a soul first. So there has to be silence in me, right? I have to have silence, and then I can tune in to the frequency of God. And the sound of God i'm gonna say today is the qualities, the experience of unlimited love, experiencing so much peace, so much power, so much benevolence, so much knowledge, purity, and to be able to connect with that, knowing that that's my birthright also. This is my father as a soul, right? We all have that. So what is the sound of God? It's the same sound as me in a sense. That the qualities of the soul. And God is the un unwavering, ever pure. Always forever perfect example of all of those qualities and powers. When we get in touch with that, it really helps us. Can you see how, if I think of myself as a soul and I begin to connect with God in this way, that that would help me. Would help me remain calmer, would help me to be able to be a little detached from situations, to be able to watch myself with mercy, to be able to have good feelings for others. To show up like maybe how I wanna show up in the world and this, the world needs this now very much. So I will leave it there. I hope you enjoyed that little acronym and the explanation, and do your own exploration of this. Maybe sit this week and ask yourself, am I a soul? Am I really a spirit? Am I this consciousness? And then who is God? And think about it for yourself. So I will leave it there. Remember, our slogan is Heal, Empower, and Serve. And until next time, take care.
