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 will be talking about the power of discernment. Now, if you've been watching the videos, you know, that I promised that I would be sharing some spiritual knowledge and today I'm going to be sharing some spiritual knowledge. Also a little slant on how I use the power of discernment, which is kind of fun. So hopefully you'll enjoy this. So today let's talk about the power of discernment. What does discernment mean? Discern means that I am understanding something and able to split apart two different things, or I'm able to understand how things relate to each other. I'm able to discern that this is this and this is this. Discernment is very important because it gives me a chance to understand what's happening in relation to the whole. I'll try to give an example. So let's say I am having a fight with my spouse. And normally I would be so caught up in the emotions of the fight that I, all I would be aware of was that they're wrong and I'm upset and I'm fighting with my spouse. Okay. I'm having a fight. Okay. With the power of discernment, I might be able to realize that maybe I was wrong. Or maybe I don't want to keep having the same fight every day. So like I'm discerning in the moment I'm aware and I'm discerning, wait a minute, this is happening. And I kind of don't want this, or I do want this, but I'm able to see it in a way that I wasn't able to see it before. Maybe I was caught up in the moment or attached to an outcome and so I'm not able to discern and figure out maybe I don't want to be doing this. Have any of you felt that way before? I'm sure many of us have that we get caught up in the moment and we kind of lose sense of myself. In spirituality, we use discernment after introspection. So like, I'm always in spirituality, I'm looking to change myself. I'm looking to upgrade myself or keep on improving. So first thing I have to do is, is introspect. I have to look at myself and then discern what's going on. So that's just what I'm just sharing. So I'm in the fight, but I'm all of a sudden I'm able to look at myself and then I'm discerning what's going on. And then the next power is deciding. Based on that discernment, you're now going to decide what to do. But I want to add a little, little more information to that because what I just shared might seem very obvious. Yeah, I know what you mean, Dr. Ann. I, sometimes I realize that I don't wanna do this or I don't wanna do that, and then I decide to do something else. So what's so spiritual about that? What's so interesting about that? One thing about it, I can say without going into the next topic, is that with meditation, I'm gonna say that your power of discernment becomes stronger and stronger and stronger. You become able to look at yourself and see what's going on. That is one of the biggest powers. It's one of the first powers that we get with meditation is that we get the power to look it up myself and find out what's going on inside. But the other thing I wanted to share is when you start discerning, you need to have some kind of a template to use, to discern maybe not with yourself, but certainly with the world. So for instance, Let's say somebody at work is rude at work, and I have to figure out how I'm going to deal with this person, besides maybe reporting them or getting them to stop, something like that. Let's say I just decide that I'm going to figure out how I'm going to deal with them in the moment. Well, I'm going to tell you what, besides the basic, telling them to stop or setting boundaries or whatever. There is a template that I use with the whole world. It seems to you work for everything. And that template is, I'm going to use different words now, Sato, Rajo, and Tamo. And this is something that I learned in spirituality. And those of you who have a Hindu background or Eastern philosophy background, you probably are familiar with those words and what they mean. Thank you. Sato, Sat means truth, but Sato means the highest, the pure, pure and, elevated. Rajo means transactional. You give me this, I give you this. Like a job is transactional. A job is rajo. I go do this service and you pay me this. So it's a I give you this, you give me this situation. That's Rajo. That's the middle. And then there's Tamo, T A M O, Tamo. And that means degraded. So I wrote down here, Tamo would be like addictions, pathological personality issues, poor health, destructive energy, that kind of thing. That would be Tamo. Rajo would be like. You know, as long as the deal is okay, I'm okay, but if the deal is not okay, then maybe I'm not stable and so forth. But my wellness and my stability depends on something else. I wrote here, the theory of relativity is actually Rajo. Because it means that everything is relative to something else. This exists because it moved the energy away from this. Or moved, the room away from this. So everything, even in the theory of relativity, so all of our science and all of our math and all of that logical thinking and philosophy is all Rajo. So Sato again is the highest, but I'm going to give some other words here. It's like the heart, the self, the unified consciousness. sameness, harmony, love is all Sato level. So how does this help me? It helps me a lot. And I'm going to share how, because my aim is always to elevate myself, always to elevate. I know right away if I'm in the TAMO stage because I'm in pain, Some kind of pain. I'm confused. I'm hurting. I feel bad. I feel upset. Whatever. That's definitely TAMO. So I got to upgrade. Usually with feelings, the way to upgrade into RAJO is to add some kind of discipline. So for instance, let's say I am eating and I feel depressed and I'm gaining all kinds of weight. Well, what's the what's the cure? I mean, the cure is do something different, put some discipline around food and exercise. You got to make yourself do something in order to get something. That's Rajo, right? So when you're in a negative emotional state and you feel really upset and emotional, sometimes to get out of that would be do something transactional. Sometimes we say, go volunteer or think about somebody other than yourself. As soon as you shift into the Rajo, you feel better. You know, you're out of that emotionally, degraded kind of state now, but if we want to go from Rajo to Sato, that's a whole nother story. Rajo means that I'm having others in relation to myself. Sato means I'm just me. And that's the spiritual part of it. So let's say in the Rajo stage, let's say I have been saying that I'm a good person because I take care of other people. And now let's say, let's say I'm a mom. Okay. And I raised my family and I, took care of my children and my home and my husband and everything. And everybody's happy. And I took care of my parents and whatever. And now I'm older and now I have no kids, no husband. All of a sudden it's like, I don't know who I am. Think about it. Maybe I'm relating to my job this way. Like, I'm relating to my ability to work, like I'm thinking on the male side now maybe. Maybe I can, provide and, and make money and do something and make something happen and whatever. And maybe what, maybe something happens, maybe I have a health issue or something and now all of a sudden, bam, I can't do those things. Who am I now? I'm hoping you're starting to see how this can help you. Help me. It helped me a lot. So whenever there is like the really bad stuff, hopefully we get out of the Tomo right away, put a little discipline in there, simplify your life, get some kind of spiritual practice going, get some self care going, and you get yourself out of the Tamo. I'm not confused. I'm not destructive. I'm definitely out of that. Now I'm in the transactional stage, the Rajo stage. I'm doing this to get this. I'm going to class to get this. I'm meditating to get this. I'm eating well to get this. I'm doing well to get this, but all of it is action based and it's all transactional. It's all based on something else besides myself. It's fine as long as it keeps going. But when something happens, where do I turn? So this is why spirituality is so important. We're building up that Sato stage, that unified consciousness stage, the stage that I know who I am, independent of everything else, and even independent of this body, even though I know I'm alive, the body makes me be able to live, but I still exist independent of the body. Like in spirituality, the body, the body goes, the earth takes the body back, but the soul doesn't die. Soul still is alive. So the Sato stage is getting to know who I am alone. I want to say that again. Sato stage is getting to know who I am alone, beyond the transaction. And what happens there in the Sato stage, in soul consciousness, I'm going to say same thing, soul consciousness. I feel intuitively connected to everyone. You've heard this. Some celebrities have had I'm thinking of one in particular who had some kind of experience and now he's sharing about how he's knows that he's not the name or the body of the person he is anymore. He knows that he's unlimited consciousness. He understands because he had an experience that was beyond Rajo and it was so powerful. That he knew that that's who he was now. And so now, even though he's having transactions, he's not attached to them. He's not upset if they stop. He's not, building his whole self respect on getting something, doing something, having something work. Think about that in terms of discernment. Wow. If I could discern. Where am I at any moment? Am I in a TAMO stage? Am I in the RAJO stage? Or do I, am I being called to go beyond the RAJO stage? How do you know when you're being called to go beyond the RAJO stage? When the thing that you were counting on in the RAJO stage starts to change. Or become unpredictable or become, I'll give another example. You're we have a new administration in the United States now, and I work for the federal government and there has been some changes in the federal government in terms of employment and things like that. So of course nothing has happened yet, but I'm wondering, Hey, what's going to happen? You know, so like I have a Rajo relationship with this job. So now I'm now watching myself and I'm discerning and I'm saying, look, don't get upset. It's you're still okay. You're still a soul. By the way, I'm not losing my job or anything, but of course, like maybe parts of the mind are wondering what's going to happen, whatever. So I'm just telling myself, if I lose my job, I get another one. If I'm like, nothing can really take away who you actually are when you're in touch with that Rajo state. I mean, with the Sato stage, when you're in the Rajo stage, you're at the, you're at the mercy of the transaction. But here's the great part. As we meditate and as we realize that I'm a soul, I'm a spiritual being, I'm living consciousness. I actually am unified consciousness. At this level all souls are the same. We are in harmony. There is no such thing as good or bad or right or wrong or all that stuff that comes with the Rajo. In the Sato stage that none of that exists, you could call that soul consciousness. None of that exists. So how wonderful to spend some time there and begin to understand that I actually have an alternative. So if something changes, something changes, like I have a Rajo relationship with this body. I was sharing in the other episode that my body is aging, right? So things are changing. You're like, okay, am I going to now get upset because they're changing? It doesn't mean that I won't do something about it or not. I'm still going to take care of the body. Very important. But do I need to get upset about it? Do I need to feel a loss? Do I need to no! I need to remember, look, I'm a soul. Everything's okay. I know the body has to go back. The body is aging. So discernment means that I'm using some kind of measure to understand what's happening. That's what discernment means. You could use discernment on yourself, about your feelings. In this case, I'm using the Sato, Rajo, and Tamo levels of purity, you could say, or levels of, I'm going to say levels of purity because when you get to the Sato level, you're pure. Rajo is, back and forth, and Tamo is degraded. So I can discern for myself where I'm at at any moment. And I'm gonna say that spiritual effort, like I said, builds up and develops the Sato stage. And what does that do? Does that mean I'm, I don't transact with anybody, or I get away from No, it just means that I'm not attached. It means that my attitude is loving and peaceful and generous because I know who I am. I actually have an alternative to that Rajo stage. Think about with the Rajo stage. Think about it. Did you ever meet somebody that keeps tabs on how much they give in the relationship? I gave you, I, I watched your kids three times and you only watched my kids too. That's really Rajo. That's really transactional, right? Now, I'm not saying that you shouldn't feel like, even like everything should feel equal, but to be focused on, tit for tat or counting the times and stuff, that's a definitely a Rajo stage and it's, it has a limitation, doesn't it? Sato is more unlimited. Sato is like, if I know that I'm okay and then that person is, maybe I feel like I'm giving more than the other person or whatever, maybe I can make an adjustment. I don't have to get mad at them. I don't have to start counting. Well, you did three and I did two and blah, blah, blah, you know, No accounts, no accounts, but I take care of my feelings. If I start feeling like something is not right, I have to take care of that. So, Um, I think I'm going to leave it there. Discernment is one of the most powerful things that we can do with our intellect. And I really like using the Sato Rajo Tamo template, so to speak, because you can look at any situation and decide right away where you are. And then of course, we're always looking to elevate. Because if I get stuck in the Tamo, obviously I'm going to be in pain. If I get stuck in Rajo, I'm going to be in pain too. So I need to free myself, go beyond, go into soul consciousness where all souls are free and have a peaceful nature, the spiritual reality of our existence. I can remember that and that will help me be able to easily set boundaries or handle the Rajo stage and stay away from the Tamo stage. Have the courage and the power to be able to put in a discipline if necessary. So I'll leave it there. I hope that was interesting. I really, love this template. It really helps me a lot to make sense of everything and make changes and be able to understand how things work. So I'll leave it there. Our slogan is heal, empower, and serve. And until next time, take care. It's, uh, it's a, it's a, it's a it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a transcript.
