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, everyone. Welcome to The Spiritual American. My name is Dr. Anne O'Hare and I'm your host. Today, we're going to be talking about what is a spiritual worldview. The last episode, if you were watching with us we had Karen Peruse here talking about a spiritual lifestyle. Today I'm going to share about a spiritual worldview. And if you've been following, you remember, I promised that I'd be sprinkling spiritual knowledge throughout these episodes. Today is going to be some of that spiritual knowledge in relation to. the world. So it should be quite an interesting episode, but before we get started, please consider like sharing and subscribing as you know, that helps us reach more and more people. And also please share with your friends and family so they can benefit as well. So, spiritual worldview, I originally titled this American worldview and then spiritual worldview because it's a spiritual American. But what I'd like to do is I'd like to invite everyone who's listening to consider that our worldview is influenced by many, many things. Not just our nationality. So the first aspect I'm going to talk about is all the influences that we have on our worldview. One of them would be nationality. One of them could be age or generation that you've been brought up in, meaning like the cohort of people that you are growing up with, could be school, could be another influence, family, of course, social. connections cultural background, traditions, religion, maybe different illnesses or different experiences that you've had would also influence your worldview. So basically it's kind of a large topic and a very individual topic. As you can imagine nowadays, you can have a room full of 10 people and you would have 10 completely different worldviews. So I'm going to talk about what the spiritual worldview is. It's actually quite a simple concept, but to take it on is not so easy because we have like I just shared, many, many different influences. So for instance, myself, I have been sharing that I grew up, I'm a Gen Xer, grew up in the United States. I'm female. I grew up with an Irish Italian background. I have a doctorate in nursing. I've been a nurse for 30 years, I'm a mother, I'm a wife, I was married before, now I'm married second time. So all of those like statistics on me influence how I see the world naturally, right? But when we look at a spiritual worldview, it's actually a worldview that everyone fits into, believe it or not. So there's a few points with this worldview. The first point for spiritual worldview. is about spirit or soul. So you'll hear me talk about the soul. So I am a spiritual being, I am living consciousness. And what does that mean? In very simple terms, it means that I am the living being looking through these eyes and making this mouth talk and speaking in a language that I learned in order to communicate something. But I'm not the mouth, and I'm not the brain, and I'm not the hands that are moving right now. I'm not the eyes that are seeing. I'm actually the living being inside that's creating the content, right? That's coming out through this body. So why is that important to understand, first of all? The soul, I, the soul, every one of us human beings is a soul. We're a soul and a body, right? That makes us human beings. The soul doesn't have gender, doesn't have nationality, doesn't have age, doesn't have, the soul is actually eternal. And I'll give an example of this. So let's say. You, you're doing an activity that you really enjoy. And did you ever have an experience where you lose a sense of time, right? Like you're reading a book, let's say, and then you're so into the book, and then you look up and you realize, oh my gosh, three hours just went by. Or let's say even in meditation or some kind of other experience, maybe in exercise or in maybe talking to a friend or talking to a loved one. You can get lost in the experience to the point where you forget about time. And you look up and you're like, wow, oh my goodness, I'm, you know, back in time. So the soul actually lives beyond time. How is it that I can be involved in something else and totally forget about time? I must have that capacity to be beyond time. Also. When I go to sleep, like we talked about sleep in a couple of episodes ago, I'm still alive, but I'm not using my body, right? Now, if this sounds a little bit scary, it doesn't need to be scary. Just realize it's natural. It happens without us even thinking about it, right? Like sleep, I go to sleep. I'm detaching from my senses. The body is resting and I, the soul, I'm still using the mind, right? But I'm not involved with the body at that time. The body's resting. Same thing with those experiences where we can go beyond time, like in a daydream or something where I'm not even paying attention to the body. Or let's say another example, let's say you're in a movie theater or you're watching a movie and you totally forget your body while you're watching the movie. You forget you're in the theater, right? Cause you're involved, you're engaged so much in what's happening. So the body is not the only thing that's going on here. So the first thing is about the soul. So the world viewpoint. begins with the idea that all human beings are actually souls. We're eternal. We come into a body, into a family, into a society, into a nationality, all those things that I mentioned before, as part of being human, we come in and play our parts through our bodies, through our families, through our experiences, et cetera. So that's the first aspect. The second aspect is that everyone is playing their part perfectly for them. As I'm sharing this, I'm thinking this could be like a red pill moment. I'm just going to share it straight through and then I'll let you kind of digest and see. what it sounds like to you. Because what this is going to do, this spiritual worldview takes out right and wrong. Takes out, you know, this is the right religion and this is the wrong religion. This is the right way to be and this is the wrong way to be. Spiritual worldview gives respect to every single human being. Every human being has a right to be here. Every human being has a part to play. And every human being is being influenced by different things at this time, right? So we see the souls, everyone's a soul. And by the way, it's hard to see that things like that, because we're so used to seeing things in terms of the other things, age gender, education, political party, we know politics is a big deal right now. So everyone is playing their part. It's hard to move away from the right and wrong, right? Because we have values that we, adopted over time. Each of us have values. And if you notice somebody else might have different values and different opinions than you, right? It's not so easy to feel comfortable and feel open with someone who is thinking and looking at things differently than you, it's much easier when you have the same, right? Isn't it that we have the same opinions as someone, or we have a friend that we can talk politics with, or talk ideas with, or maybe someone who shares our career. Or our cultural background, interests, things like that. It's much easier to be around someone who you agree with or someone who is the same. So the purpose of a spiritual worldview is to see how we're all the same. We're all souls. We're all playing our parts. We're all being influenced right now by all of our things. Like I just said, all the experiences and things that come with having a body and being a human being on the planet. And then the third aspect is the laws of karma, which we talked about before that each one of us has a part to play, like I said, but each one of us also has karmic relationship with the world. If I do something, I'm going to get that energy back. And that's, that's nature. That's a natural law of being here on this planet, being in matter, being in time, having a body. This is all part of it. So a spiritual worldview is kind of looking at things as they are in such a way where it's true for everyone. And we're all the same in a sense that we're all souls, we're all playing our parts. We all have karmic accounts that we're working out and dealing with. We all make choices and we all do things or think things or act certain ways and they have consequences or they have good or bad, right? Even the good things that we do have positive consequences. So the spiritual worldview means that. I am not looking at the world through any of my ordinary human lenses. It's very, very difficult what I'm saying right now because we're not even aware that we're looking through the lens. We feel like we're looking the way it's supposed to be or we're so used to it that it doesn't feel like a lens. But the purpose of spirituality is to take a look at things from a kind of a universal standpoint. If I was to, one other example I was thinking of before was if you're on the, if you're in an airplane and you're on the runway and you're getting ready to take off. When you're on the runway, everything feels to be moving fast and you feel the engines and the engines are really revving and everything is so intense. And then you get up in the air and you feel the weight and you got to climb, climb, climb, climb. But after a while, you don't really feel the engine much anymore. Or if you feel it, it's kind of goes into the background of your mind. And then when you look out the window, you're way beyond. any individual thing that's happening. As a matter of fact, if someone didn't tell you, that's that country or that's that state, or now we're going over this, maybe you wouldn't even know where you were, but you're still alive and you're still yourself and you're able to look at something. So, um, Like that airplane, what we're trying to do is take on a, a perspective that allows everything to be the way it is and that I'm the way I am. And then the last piece of this is to develop my original qualities as a soul, which are Peace, power, love, generosity, mercy, understanding, things like that. So when I kind of separate myself or when I try to work on moving away from those old ways of seeing things, what I want to do is bring forward my benevolent nature, my understanding nature. As I'm sharing all this. I can see how someone can hear it and just think that sounds interesting. The whole purpose of spiritual practice is to develop a spiritual viewpoint and a spiritual nature. Spiritual nature means benevolence, kindness, generosity, understanding, love, wisdom, purity, peace. How do I get from where I am now to that? worldview. I'll add one more aspect to this. You know, you may hear like people talk about the collective unconscious or that we're all connected, things like that. It's not so easy to understand that or relate to that in our everyday life. Everything seems so separated and seems so unique and seems so complex and complicated for us. But when we're sitting in our heart of hearts, when we're being quiet, we can kind of sense that I actually have love for the world or I actually wish peace for everyone. In my heart of hearts, I don't wish anyone ill. I don't wish to be negative towards anyone. We are negative and those things happen because of those other influences that I was talking about. So spiritual practice is about strengthening my inherent spiritual nature and lessening the influence of those other things. You still live. I mean, I'm still an American. I'm still female. I still have a job. I still have a kid. I still, but internally, I'm not, reacting so much to others. I'm not. Feeling upset when people are different. There are areas that I'm working on right now that maybe I'm a little more emotional than others or a little more reactive to than others, but that's part of transitioning from that ordinary view to a spiritual perspective. So how do we begin this journey? We begin this journey with meditation. And also, you know, I'm reminded of Gandhi. I'm reminded of like other people who had this. idea of peace in the world. And I want to say that spiritually speaking, if you want to say God, or if you want to say goodness, or if you want to say, you know, higher power, any benevolent force, I'm going to say God, but God is, is present in the sense that to infuse the world with this spiritual perspective. When I have a spiritual perspective, it's very, very difficult for me to judge. And this is the other last piece that I'm going to share. Imagine that you're in a room full of adults. You're in a room full of adults. Let's say there's maybe 15 adults in a room and then someone walks in with an infant. Some lady walks in with a baby in her arms, an infant. What happens to the room? What happens to everyone in the room when that baby comes into the room? I'm going to say that the whole energy of the room shifts. Everyone's interested. Everyone's happy. Everyone's looking at the baby. Everyone, you know, there might be someone who definitely reacts and isn't interested, but naturally we're attracted to the infant. So we want to go try to interact, try to make eye contact, look at the baby, look at the body, you know, connect and so forth. And during that time, we're feeling very loving and pure and happy. And we want to connect. We want to feel connected. At that time, I'm going to say everyone in the room has the same consciousness. They want to be happy. They want to feel connected. And what is it about the baby? The baby didn't give a lecture. The baby didn't write a book. The baby didn't go to college. The baby barely knows it's there. Baby doesn't even realize that it has a body. But the presence, the pure living being reminds us of our pure living awareness. Yes. And that we all share. So in that sense, we are connected in that feeling. We are connected. So deep inside our hearts, we have the same essence. And so I'm going to wrap this up by saying this. So a spiritual worldview, and actually it's the purpose of spiritual effort, I'm going to say, is to change from my ordinary perspective Which is constantly being influenced by so many factors, like I mentioned, gender, culture, education, family, age, illness, health, whatever, everything is all influence, influence, influence to a universally true, in a sense, true in the sense that it's for everyone perspective that not only makes us Beyond time, eternal, everyone's playing their part. Everyone has their own karma playing out, which is helps me to not react to people, right? If they're playing their part, I don't have to react because I'm not responsible. They're not responsible for me either. If you like, you can go back to the karma class, episode eight, which would go deep much deeper into this, uh, karma conversation. But then finally, remember that baby analogy, that the feeling of being alive, that curiosity and happiness and wanting to be connected and wanting to be happy, that is wish I can have for myself and I can feel that and also wish that for everyone else. As a matter of fact, that's part of our practice in Raja Yoga meditation is that we send good wishes to everyone from that pure place and we're all connected. In my heart of hearts, I love everyone. I don't have anything against anyone, right? It's like we return to innocence. So a spiritual worldview is innocent, understanding of the soul, understanding that we're all playing our parts here, and then working on myself to transform myself, moving from those old influences to a benevolent, powerful, connected, loving, innocent, pure way of seeing things. As I do that, I become a blessing for everyone around me and the world. So I think I'm going to leave it there, but I hope that that gives you something to think about. Please, if you're interested in learning more, check out in the description for the release your wings meditations, if you want to start meditating, and also the Brahma Kumaris website. You can find out where the centers are and so forth if you want to get more involved and get connected. But generally, I hope that you understand the concept of this because this is what spirituality is actually about. It has understanding in it. There's a science to it. It's not like worshipping. There's no worshipping in spirituality. There's unity and understanding. So I will leave it there. Remember our slogan is heal, empower, and serve. And I hope that you see that it by taking on a spiritual worldview and transforming myself, it's definitely going to bring a different energy into the world and that is service. So thank you all for joining us and until next time, take care. You
