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, 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 true generosity. It's a beautiful topic, but before we get started, please consider like, sharing, and subscribing as you know, YouTube uses that to trip the algorithm to get this content out to more and more people. And please consider sharing this with your friends and family so that they can benefit as well. So today we're talking about true generosity. And as I was thinking about this, the last episode was living from the heart. And this is kind of related to that. True generosity is that I'm giving myself authentically, but I'm going to talk a little bit about of a spiritual way. What does it mean to give? Because sometimes we think of giving as I have two apples and I give one to you. So now you have one and I have one. So I lost one and you gained one. That's the way we would ordinarily think of giving. But the giving that I'm talking about now is more like the giving of the sun to the earth. So the sun shines and you, it's giving something, it's giving light, it's giving warmth, it's giving energy, to the earth. But it's not losing anything. It generates, it self generates its own energy. Sometimes I like to talk about this as like the fission versus fusion. So fission reaction is more like a combustible, something burns something else and it creates a waste product. Whereas fusion, it self generates its own energy. It, it lives on its own self. It doesn't consume anything from the outside. This is an important point here. True generosity means that I'm have an attitude of self respect. And I wrote down here, Royalty. So royalty, some of us might hear that word and think, well I don't think I'm royal. I'm just like a regular person. It's not like you're going to be against anybody or act superior or anything like that. I'm thinking of royalty in the sense of royal people do not take anything from people directly. They give, right? So if somebody would come up to the queen, this is just, I'm not saying this is exact, but. Generally speaking, royal people don't take things from others. Their servants would take or their helpers would take it from the person. There's a sense of I am okay on my own. I don't need anything. This is an important step to understand that different kind of giving that we're talking about. The giving that's like the sun versus the giving that's like taking. Like the combustion engine, right? The combustion engine takes oxygen and takes fuel and burns it and makes power and then has exhaust. That's like a fission reaction or that's a combustion reaction. The fusion reaction is like the sun, like I said. So how do we do this spiritually? Well, if I'm thinking that I need, if I have an attitude that I need something, I need people to say hello to me. I need people to be nice to me. I need somebody to give me respect. I need them to give me the job. I need them to act this way. I need them to act that way. I need my body to be a certain way. I need all these external things to be what I want them to be. I'm putting myself in a position of needing, like I want to take from that. I want to take from that smile. I want to take from that job. I want to take. So generosity means I'm giving, I'm not taking. You can't give if you're taking. We have to think about that for a minute. I can't really give if I'm taking. So the royalty part means that they don't take, they only give. And I've seen this too, like with spiritual leaders or something, they give, they have, they give things to people. They don't take from people. So can we think of an example of this? Let's say with a child, if I have a child, I'm not taking anything from the child. I shouldn't be, right? I should be giving to the child. Actually child is a good example of this relationship because as a parent, you're there to give to the child. But what does the child want the most from you? You, the child wants the, your authentic self. They want to be with you. So with children, we shouldn't be really taking from them, right? I don't need my child for my self esteem. I don't need my child to tell me how great I am. I don't need my child to, make me feel better about myself. I should be able to maintain my own self respect and then be available to give to the child. So develop an attitude of self respect. The greatest generosity is when we progress spiritually. So I'll give an example from work. I really had a problem at work. I had a lot of problems at work. I really was needy at work. I wanted like those examples I just gave. I wanted the job. I wanted this respect. I wanted these responsibilities. I didn't want these. I wanted this. I want, want, want, want, want. So my whole attitude was like a desirous attitude. How can I be generous? If I'm sitting there all the time, how can I give? I remember one time somebody said to me, you know, people don't want to come and talk to you. They don't feel comfortable coming and talking to you. And I was like, what are you talking about? I'm the nicest person ever. What are you talking about? I really was not in touch with it because I didn't understand. This principle of if you have desires and you want and you want to take, you can't give. And if you're not giving yourself or you're not being authentic or you're not being real, you're not being the sun, let's say, of just radiating your own self, others can't really be with you. It's difficult to be with you because they feel that neediness. They feel it. I shared many times about the time that I went for the job at work. And I remember one time, even somebody else tried to intercede for me. Somebody else tried to intercede to my boss for the job. And my boss was like, no, I'm not because, and I know why now, I didn't understand then, but I know why now she couldn't bring herself to give it to me because of the way I was being. I was being needy. I was being petty. I was being resentful. I was being selfish, which is the opposite of generous, right? So how do I start the possibility of being generous? First of all, we use the phrase, don't ask, don't take. Don't ask, don't take. We have to reestablish our self respect. Can you see how this is different than giving somebody something and you lose something? It's a different kind of giving, right? I can say, oh, I'm giving at the church or I'm giving this or I'm giving that and I'm so generous. Is that generosity? I mean, maybe it is on one level. But we're talking about generosity of the self, generosity coming from the self. How do I give of myself? First, don't ask, don't take. I have to remove the consciousness of needing. I have to remove the consciousness of desire from myself. I can't be wanting and giving at the same time, right? Can you see that they're incompatible. If I want something, how can I give something? It doesn't work. So you might be saying, well, I don't want everything. Can I give in one area and whatever? Yes. But in order to give from yourself, if you have any desires, it weakens that ability. It dims your light, so to speak. Like if I have no desire and I'm just being myself and I'm being, in my self respect and I feel open and I'm being receptive to others and I'm just being myself here, then That authentically is me giving to the world. Another quick example, I'm doing this podcast and of course thinking along the lines of how to grow it and so forth. And I saw this person who does coaching on how to make the podcast bigger and stuff. And he was saying that he was talking to, he talks to people all the time. And one of the things he hears is that people say, well, I don't know if I can do it. I don't know if I can manage this and so forth. And he would say to them, you're being selfish. So weird, right? You're being selfish. And the person was like, what do you mean? And he said, whatever you have to give, what you have to give, others need that thing. Others want that thing. So you being. Resistant you stopping yourself from doing this thing is robbing them of what they could potentially get from you. Now I'm throwing that out there because maybe wherever we are in this process, maybe I'm in the place where I don't really feel like I have much to give, or maybe I'm in the place where yes, I would like to build up my self respect, or maybe I feel very powerless in this. Don't ask, don't take sounds pretty good right now to begin the process of, restoring my power of myself. But wherever I am on this, in this process, the world wants you. Let's say that the real you, the real me, that's what it wants. So can I give that? So what is true generosity? I'm going to say now, I didn't think I was going to say this, but I'm going to say now give the world what it wants, which is you, you learn how to stop taking. Learn how to stop desiring, build your self respect, be yourself, give yourself just by being yourself. We had a person at work, one of the leaders at work who was like that. She was one of the main top nursing leadership and when she would walk into the room, everybody would feel great. She didn't do anything, but you could tell she knew who she was. She knew who she was. She was very powerful, very competent, and she just was very open because she was very confident in herself. She didn't need anything from anybody, but she was receptive. She asked you a question, she would listen to your answer. She was comfortable in her own skin, so to speak. So we can say true generosity is about being comfortable in your own skin and giving the world what it wants, which is you. Whatever that means, whatever that means, there's no script. Everybody's playing their own part, which is what's so beautiful about this too. I can't tell any of you what you need to do. Only you know that. But we can talk about principles and we can share our experiences, maybe inspire each other to continue, to cooperate with each other. That's also part of generosity, right? Sharing experiences, sharing myself. So I'll leave it there. I hope we gave a couple of ideas, new ideas, and what generosity really means. And the first steps of don't ask, don't take is very powerful, by the way. You can transform a lot just by doing that. So remember our slogan is heal, empower, and serve. And so until next time, thank you for being here. Take care. Um, uh,
