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 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 dealing with moods. This is very interesting. It's a little subtle and maybe we'll be looking at it a little different way than you have thought of before. But before we get started, please consider like sharing and subscribing. You know, that that helps us get our content out to more and more people. And then of course, I'll Please consider sharing with your friends and family so that they can benefit as well. So moods. What is a mood? M O O D, right? What is a mood? So let's define mood. So I think I'm gonna say that for today a mood means that I'm having a feeling inside my body and I'm aware of it. and I don't really know why it's there. It's not necessarily related to anything happening, but it's usually a feeling that is interpreted as negative. So I feel like I'm in a bad mood. I feel in a tired mood. I feel sad. I feel angry. I feel defeated. There's some kind of heavy negative feeling going through my awareness. So I would call that a mood. It's different than a regular feeling because a feeling is more upfront. It's like, yes, I feel this. I feel, I feel upset. I feel good. I feel happy. I feel alert. I feel receptive. But a mood comes in the background. It's like swimming underwater. One of the other Raj Yogis that I know, my friend said that it's like the unconscious, like the subconscious is. is pushing up to be felt or to be seen. So that's what we consider a mood. The next question I have here is, do we get pulled into the mood? So this is my experience of a mood that I'll be sitting, doing whatever I'm doing. And all of a sudden this feeling of dread, We'll come for no reason. It's like a feeling of something's wrong. Let's say something's wrong. Do I get pulled into that feeling? I would say generally in the past, definitely yes, because as soon as that feeling would come, the thoughts would start, what is, I feel something's wrong. And then the memories and the ideas and the relationships and everything would start coming in to kind of. flesh out this feeling that something's wrong. Actually, it's kind of like a dream. This is how dreams work. If you have an unresolved emotion or an unresolved feeling and you go to sleep, your mind may create scenarios, creative scenarios for you to process that feeling. And I feel like a mood is like that. A mood is coming up to be processed. But what we do is a lot of times, at least in my experience, We get into it. I react to it. I start thinking, I start creating all these, like I said, scenarios and memories, everything of why it's there and so forth. So what thoughts do we have? Well, we have negative thoughts, of course. What's wrong? What's going on? I feel angry. I feel sad. We have self critical thoughts. Something's wrong with me, why, why can't I just be happy, you know, all these questions about the self, maybe I'm depressed, maybe I start feeling sad about myself or I start feeling hopeless. about myself or it's against the body. Sometimes you'll get a mood. I would also call like a pain or something in the body could also be like a mood. It's like a physical mood, right? I have a pain. My back hurts for no reason. My leg hurts for no reason. My neck hurts for no reason. So that could be like a physical mood. So it's in the body or it's emotional and I'm reacting, I'm thinking and whatever. And there's no reason that it's there. There's no physical reason for it to be there. I'm not reacting to anything. It's just coming, so what can we do about this? First of all, realize that it's normal. It's okay. We're not one dimensional beings. We're very dynamic energy fields. Let's say our, my consciousness is very dynamic. It has many experiences all at different levels of processing. Maybe some things are fully processed. Maybe some things are half processed. There's no way of knowing. It's very complex. It's like saying, what is every, what is this cell doing in my body? Well, there's billions of cells, let's say a cell going through the bloodstream and I'm trying to figure out what's going on with the whole bloodstream. Well, it's a very complex. system, so I'm going to say that our consciousness in a sense is a complex system. Like there are some things that are easy for us to understand. Some things may be under the surface. So moods would be something that's coming up from below. And how do we deal with moods? Okay. Generally how we deal with moods is what I just said. We start creating negative thoughts, making it wrong and creating negative thoughts and feelings about it. and I start feeling bad, and it keeps the mood going actually, or maybe it doesn't, but it doesn't, it doesn't make it feel better. So that's what we normally do. So if we're going to do something different, if we're going to do something positive, what would be the thing to do? Well, first of all, notice that it's a mood. Notice and identify that it's a mood. Specify it to yourself. Let the intellect say, it's just a mood. It's not reality. It's not the truth. It's not justification for all the other issues that are going on in life. It's just a mood. And you can say what kind of mood it is. Okay, I just, it feels sad, or it feels depressed, or it feels a little angry, or it feels a little hopeless, or it feels a little fearful, or whatever. So, I have to identify it. Notice it. Identify it. Second I want to give a principle that you can't resolve a feeling with a thought. You have to resolve a feeling with a feeling. So for instance, let's say. You feel really upset and you go to talk to your friend or not your friend, let's say your parent, let's say you're a child and you're really upset and you go to talk to your parent and your parent says, don't talk to me now I'm busy or says something like, well, I know why you feel that way. You feel that way because this, you failed the test in school and it'll be all right. At that moment when there's a justification coming or a rationalization, it doesn't stop the feeling. It may give me something to think about and maybe we've done this, maybe this is part of the conditioning that we've picked up along the way, which is whenever I have a feeling, let me overthink it. Let me create a rationalization about it. Let me figure out why it's there. Let me figure out a justification for it, but we're not resolving the feeling. A feeling needs to be resolved with a feeling. A thought is resolved with a thought, but here we're talking about feelings, so what feeling do you think would help with a mood? I'm going to say that the best, the only thing that I have noticed that helps with moods is bodiless stage. And I'm going to explain what I mean by that. If you're having a feeling like a regular feeling throughout the day, like I'm a little nervous about something, but it's very conscious. Like, I know that I'm nervous because of this situation or that situation. You can still bring your thoughts in to help you. There's still rationalization can possibly help there. But if it's a mood, it has no connection to anything that's going on. It doesn't work. The thoughts don't work there. Rationalizations don't work. Justifications don't work. Actually, they make it worse because you're, connecting it, like I said, to this to situations. So how do we bring up a feeling that will help resolve this feeling? And I've experienced this, so I'm speaking from my own experience here, bodiless stage is the way to go. What is bodiless stage? I'm bringing my attention inward and I'm telling myself that I'm a soul. Remember the point of light, right? I'm a soul. I am living consciousness. And I am in this body, I'm a point of light, I'm this point of living consciousness and my nature is peace. My nature is peace. I am peaceful. I am a peaceful soul and I bring my attention into that peace. So you see, I'm bringing in a different feeling and I'm bringing my attention towards that feeling. So what am I doing? I'm bringing my attention away from the mood. If the mood comes and I'm thinking about it, worrying about it, wondering about it, talking about it, figuring it out, I'm bringing more energy towards it. If I bring myself into bodiless stage, I am an eternal being. I am eternal consciousness. I am living consciousness. I am a soul and my nature is peace. I am peaceful. I'm a peaceful soul. My attention goes to the peace and the mood subsides. It works. I'm talking about moods in particular because moods seem to be very resistant to thinking. They don't want to, they actually, it makes it worse. So bodiless stage is the answer. And again, remember you can't resolve a feeling with a thought. If it's superficial, maybe, but moods are not superficial. Remember they're coming up from below. So I'll try to give an example before we finish this one, one of the moods that sometimes comes is a feeling of, Agitation. Like I'm doing something and I feel agitated. I don't feel comfortable in my own skin, let's say I would call it a mood because nothing's wrong. Everything's fine. And I'm going through the day or I'm doing this activity or that activity. I get this feeling of agitation, like something's not right. It should be this way. It shouldn't be this way. It, something's not right. And the feeling is there. And so I have practiced when that happens and sometimes I'm successful and sometimes I'm not. I'm being honest. Sometimes the thoughts take over and I'm, I, maybe I realize it later I'm not a hundred percent successful, but I can tell you that when I do do bodiless stage, it works. So, that feeling of agitation, so first I have to notice, okay, here's a mood, here's that agitated mood, that feeling like something's wrong. And I know, I actually, the intellect is saying nothing's wrong, but I can see you there. I feel, the feeling is there. So now I'm going into bodiless stage. I'm going into a peaceful stage. And in that peace, and I stay in that peace. And the other feeling will gently leave and it's happened. So I know I'm saying the same thing over and over, but I'm hoping that that way of handling it will remain with you so that you can practice. Remember, feeling, feeling, thought, thought. Very important. Moods are not, like sometimes say, we say, Oh, I'm in a bad mood or whatever. I don't think that this is something that we should ignore. I think we should pay a little bit of attention and we should learn how to get over it so that it doesn't create negative impact on our relationships, on our health and so forth. Because it really, even depression, I think depression is, comes from somewhat comes from this. That there's moods coming and they're not resolving. And it's just like weighing the self down, weighing you down. So I hope that's given you something to think about and realize that a mood is not a big deal, but we have to deal with it in a certain way. So remember our slogan is heal, empower, and serve. And until next time, take care. Um, uh,
