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 returning to the laws of karma. So I hope you have watched episode eight and karma has been sprinkled in many, many of these episodes. So before we get started, please consider like sharing and subscribing. You know that that helps YouTube to get our content out to more and more people. And please also consider sharing with your friends and family so they can benefit as well. So we're back to the laws of karma, and I put in the thumbnail, another red pill. So what is a red pill? So for those of you who didn't see episode eight, I keep referring back to that, I guess, It's pretty big deal, right? Pretty important that, that karma episode, but we're back to karma. What does a red pill mean? So just quickly in the movie, the matrix, there was a moment where the main character was told, the question was, what is the matrix? It was a big mystery. And he was talking to someone who was about to tell him what the matrix was. And he said, if you take the blue pill. You are going to forget everything that happened and you'll just go back to your life and everything will be the same. But if you take the red pill, I'm going to tell you what the matrix is. And once I tell you, you will never be able to unsee it. So a red pill basically means you see things from a completely new perspective. And once you see it that way, You can't go back to not seeing it. So you could call it like waking up or realization or something like that. You see more of it and it makes sense to you and something changes in your perception. So in the first episode on karma, episode eight, like I said, we talked about taking full responsibility for your life. Everything in your life is your responsibility. For instance, let's say I'm not happy in my marriage. Well, I'm the one that said I do, right? So technically I'm responsible. So this is a huge first step. And for those of you who haven't seen episode eight, I would recommend go back and watch that one so that you're kind of up to speed with this idea of taking the red pill of karma. The first big step is to say, I'm responsible. I'm not going to blame anything else ever again for the way I feel huge. That is a huge first step. So in the class that we give, the Raja Yoga Foundation course, I do talk about karma. We do give the karma class and when I give it, I do say to the students, are you ready to take the red pill? Are you ready to stop blaming? Are you ready to stop gossiping? Are you ready to stop complaining? It's a big, big, big first step. So let's say for this episode that many of you listening have taken that first step that maybe you have said, look, I'm not going to gossip anymore. I'm not going to, be negative anymore. I'm taking responsibility for my life. I want to be proactive and so forth. Today we're going to talk about the second red pill and what is that red pill? We're going to talk about taking responsibility for your feelings. In the moment. And I'm going to be very specific on what that means. In the first episode on karma, we talked about not blaming. So I'm not outwardly thinking that that thing is responsible for my feelings. The second red pill is while I'm feeling it, I turn my attention away from the circumstances. And I see myself in the moment. So I'm not thinking about it afterwards, I'm actually looking at how I'm responding, how I feel, what I'm thinking, my body language, whatever else is going on with me in the moment while it's happening. This is a huge second step. And actually this step is, I'm going to say the beginning of spiritual effort. real spiritual effort because we're awakening the ability to observe myself. I wrote here this idea of self observation. It's the beginning of self observation. It's hard to talk about this because it's a something that happens in the moment. Have you ever been in a situation where in the middle of the, let's say the conversation that you're having with someone, you realize, I'm really not comfortable here. I need to get out of here. Like you get that feeling like I need to get out of here or there's some, something not right. You get a feeling, you're aware of your feelings in that minute. Are you able to turn your attention and take care of yourself and maybe change the circumstance? Or do I still keep going because that's what I did before or because there's some social norm or because I'm afraid I'm going to mess up the relationship or so forth? Do I let some other thing come in and tell me what to do? Or am I actually responding to the feelings I'm having in the moment? I have a really good example of this. I did give the example of this, the student who took the karma class and she shared that. She had a fight with her husband and this is actually the second red pill is what I'm talking about here She was having a fight with her husband in the fight while she was fighting Suddenly she was aware That she was responsible for the fight. That she was the one that started it. She was the one that was keeping it up. And because she had that clear self observation in the moment, she was able to stop her behavior. She apologized. She stopped fighting. She apologized. And she said, I'm sorry, I started this and I apologize. And her husband was like, it was very surprising. Why is this so important? How powerful is it to stop yourself in the middle of a fight and say, you know what? I just realized I'm, I'm to blame for this. I'm really sorry. What's going on inside the person that they're able to do that? Well, there has to be a commitment to being responsible for yourself. So the first step of karma is that I'm responsible. So I really feel like that first red pill is the, is the first big step towards empowerment, self empowerment. I'm responsible. I'm not going to blame anybody else anymore. No one else is to blame. I made the choices. I can make different choices and that's the truth actually, but we have to accept it. It's like accepting the truth of something. The second red pill means that I'm open to those awarenesses of my own responsibility. in a moment where maybe I was being angry or selfish or insensitive or whatever other way I was being. This is a big deal. I have another example. So let's say I had a fight with somebody And I I see them coming down the hall and I start walking down the hall and as soon as I see them I turn to go the other way. So what's happening in that moment? I'm going to slow it way down here, okay? So I'm walking down the hall and nothing's happening. I see that person and what happens in that moment? It's some memory. Emerges of whatever I'm angry at the person or I'm mad at them or I'm blaming them or something. So some issue comes up about them, some memory, and now I'm reacting to the memory. And I'm saying, Oh, I want to go some other way. And then I just say, Oh, I don't want to see them. And then I go, so what am I doing in that moment? I'm blaming them and I'm changing my behavior based on some idea that I had before about how wrong they are, how I don't want to deal with them or whatever. Maybe I'm mad at them or something. How could I use the second red pill here? Well, I actually did, so I'm sharing the actual experience. I noticed what I was doing. I was avoiding this person. I was actually living in fear at work as I'm sharing this. I'm hoping that people realize that what I'm sharing here is subtle. It's happening all the time, but we're not paying attention to it. We're not taking care of our feelings. We're blaming, we're reacting. So I'm going to say that what I did was I saw, I realized, I observed that I was living in fear at work. I was anticipating that this person was going to be there, this person was not going to be there. What am I going to do? I'm going to feel better if they're not here. It was like this whole universe of feelings and fears and ideas. was going based on that person. One time I heard somebody say, they're living rent free in your head. What does that mean? That means that I am creating this whole world of circumstance about that person that I'm now reacting to. Isn't that what happens with let's say a marriage or a relationship where you're fighting all the time, right? You've created, I've created this situation in my head about that person and now they're there and it's getting triggered and what am I doing? I'm acting out the fear or I'm acting out the anger or I'm acting out whatever. And that example of that student, she saw it. She saw what she was doing, that she was acting out the anger from something else and she stopped it. So what did I do at work? Well, I realized that I was living in fear of This person and obviously I don't want to live in fear at work It took me a while because I actually realized how disempowered I was feeling I'm not blaming work for that. I don't blame anyone for that. I don't blame anyone for my feelings. But I felt very disempowered and I was very reactive to others. So I had to really take care of myself. This is where I say sometimes I had to put myself in ICU, I had to put myself in emotional ICU because I had to take care of my own feelings. They don't have to make sense to anyone else. One of the most painful things is when you say to someone, something's bothering you. And they would say, Oh, you're just being sensitive. Forget it. But no, no, no, no, no. I have to take care of myself wherever I'm at. If I feel sensitive and if I feel upset and I feel disempowered, I need to be with that. So what I did was I started taking care of my feelings and I started little, slowly, slowly talking to myself and telling myself, look, you don't have to be afraid. You can be yourself and that I can't do anything to you. And I was really afraid. And I have a feeling I'm not the only one. that there's a lot of us out there that are operating under some kind of fear, disempowerment or something. And those feelings are there. And part of this, second red pill or karma 2. 0 is to be able to in the moment, see what's going on and take care of it. In the case of my student, it was stop the fight. In the case of this, it was take care of my own feelings. My fears, my worries, my feeling insecure, let's say. So the last thing I'll leave you with is this idea of merciful self observation. So the result I'm going to say of this second level of karma, the red pill, second red pill, is that we begin to develop the ability to self observe. Now you don't want to just self observe any old way because I can self observe and then be judgmental, right? Just like I said, if you tell somebody, I feel this way and they say, Oh, you're just being sensitive, whatever. Well, that's not being very nice to the person who's sharing with you. So if I'm going to look at my own feelings, I need to be receptive to my own feelings. I need to understand myself or at least be willing to understand myself. And I'm going to call that merciful self observation. And what does mercy mean? I came up with this little thing. Mercy is love. understanding and detachment. So I'm loving myself. I'm understanding myself and I'm a little detached. Like I'm not emotionally, affected. So it's kind of like when a child has a tantrum or a child is upset It doesn't help if the mother starts having a tantrum too, right? Or the mother starts crying too if the kid is crying It doesn't help if the mother starts crying too. You don't want to fall apart in the face of an emotion. So something has to be stable. So i'm going to call that detachment So i'm a little detached and i'm but i'm understanding and i'm loving I care I actually care about my feelings as they are. I don't know if this is true for anyone else It has to be I, I grew up in a generation. I don't know if it's specific to my generation. I don't think it can be limited to us, but I know that the generation that I grew up in this, I'm in my early fifties. So this was like the Gen X growing up in the seventies and eighties. Taking care of your feelings was not on the agenda. I either had to take care of everybody else's feelings, what I thought I had to take care of everybody else's feelings, or I had to just get through it, make something happen, make something work. And, this kind of results focused way of living. There's nothing wrong with any of that. It's just for me being able to take care of my feelings. I had no idea how to do that. So spirituality can help us with this because as I sit for meditation and when I started meditation, I was very vulnerable. I was very hurting inside, even though outside I was like successful and good at whatever nobody would ever think. That I felt insecure. Actually when I shared it with somebody once about you're insecure, like no clue from the outside, my behavior outside that I was feeling insecure. But with meditation, I'm spending time with myself and I'm starting to get to know how I really feel. Not just about circumstances, but mainly how I feel about myself. I feel that self empowerment is the medicine for everything. pretty much. But I have to heal. I have to get in touch with how I feel in a circumstance. So just to kind of wrap this up, the first red pill of karma is that I'm responsible for everything going on in my life. So I'm not going to blame anybody or gossip or whatever. That's the first step. Second step is I'm willing to Look at myself and see myself in a new way in a way that's going to give a realization as to what I'm actually Feeling and open up possibilities for new behaviors new ideas, new ways of seeing things. And all those new ways are self empowering and self empowering, not against anybody else. Because if I'm empowered in a spiritual way, I'm naturally harmonious with everyone else. I'm authentic. And I really like that word authentic. How can, if I'm being myself, how can I really hurt anybody else? We have a lot of wrong ideas in our heads, but I really believe. And it's been the truth for me. And I believe it to be true that if I trust my own feelings and I learn how to take care of myself, I'll find my way back home. I'll find my way back. It's like I left myself a trail of breadcrumbs and my feelings are helping me find my way back. So I hope that gives another thing to think about. I can give more and more examples, but it's a journey of self discovery and a journey of self empowerment and self respect. This meditation. Raja yoga meditation, understanding that I'm a soul beginning to shift my awareness of who I am, opens up this door to this following this law of karma at deeper and deeper levels, being responsible for myself at deeper and deeper levels, seeing myself. Deeper and deeper levels, healing, empowering, and then I'm able to have a positive impact in the world. So I will leave it there. Our slogan is heal, empower, and serve. And so I just talked about how we heal, empower, and serve. And so until next time, take care. It's a good thing. I'm glad you're here.
