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're going to answer the question, do I have to meditate? I know there's a lot of you out there that are curious about meditation. Maybe a little skeptical about meditation, maybe have tried meditation, but haven't been able to keep up with it. Maybe tried it and for a while and didn't get any results or so forth. We're going to address some of that today. But before we get started, please consider if you're watching on YouTube, like sharing and subscribing to get our content, to trip the algorithm and get it to more people. And please consider sharing with your friends and family so they can benefit as well. So today I'm going to talk to those of you who were like me, who maybe are even practicing meditation and not really getting the kind of results that are being promised, like peaceful experiences and so forth. So the question is, do I have to meditate? So here's the first short answer. No, you don't have to meditate. Nobody has to do anything, right? The second short answer, do I have to meditate? And the answer is yes. You do have to meditate because if we want to get better, if we want to start making substantive changes in our life and in our experiences as a human being, yes, we need to reflect on what's going on in our mind. So I would say on a physical level, no, you don't have to meditate, but if you look at it as a functional necessity, then yes, you do have to meditate. And I like to look at it as self care. Sometimes in class I say to people, well, you know, we brush our teeth every day. Can you not brush your teeth? Sure. Is it a good idea not to brush your teeth? No, it's not. We have plenty of science that tells us that we need to take care of our teeth, do you have to wash your clothes? No. But is it a good idea to wash your clothes? Yes, for hygiene reasons, for staying healthy, and so forth. So maybe part of the reason why we're not convinced about meditation is because we don't have enough science to say why we should be doing it. So let me give a little bit of non scientific science. Many of you have been watching the podcast know that when I started meditating, I was in another marriage, previous marriage with a child and a job and everything. And I was the typical, what I would call the American, action focused and Ready to take life by the horns and get something done and whatever. But I wasn't in touch with my feelings very much. My feelings and what I really wanted and living from my heart and all this wasn't really on the agenda for me because I learned from society, from family and everything else that it's much more important to emphasize the doing and the getting something done and thinking and planning and all that was much, much more important than paying attention to my feelings. So predictably, if you think about it, if you don't pay attention to how you really feel, that's going to show up somewhere, maybe as physical symptoms. I used to have digestive problems. I used to have really significant anxiety. I was not happy in that previous marriage. But I was living it. And so how did meditation help me with that? Well, it did help me with it because as soon as I started meditating, I was able to start looking at myself with a little bit of objectivity. And this is important because meditation is not as concrete as brushing your teeth or paying your bills or taking care of your dog or taking care of your kids or, that's very concrete because it's like, okay, yes, they're going to die. I have to take care of them. Or yeah, I'm going to get. Cavities or, or yes, I want to look good or I want to be clean and I have to take care of my house or pay the bills. I don't want to go into debt or there should also be, I'm going to say some kind of standard for my emotional life and how I feel and the satisfaction that I have in my life. And am I meeting that standard? So take a look for yourself for a minute. Am I happy? And not just happy, but am I satisfied? Do I feel content? Do I feel that every area of my life is in a place where I feel relatively good about it and stable about it? Well I certainly did not. And I'm here to say that with meditation it is possible for you to make those changes to get your life to look the way you want it to look in terms of feeling satisfied. So I want to talk a little bit about what is the resistance to meditation? Well, one resistance that we might have is our attitude towards meditation. Sometimes we have an attitude towards meditation. Like it's another thing to do. Just another thing to do, right? Think about it. That makes perfect sense. If you were brought up like I was, where everything was all about doing, and then somebody tells you, well, if you want to get better, start doing this. I don't need somebody to tell me to do something else. Something else is coming to mind right now. One of the other things that I used to do is I used to be very sensitive to other people's needs and other people's reactions and completely oblivious. to my own needs and feelings. So you can see how not only would meditation be perceived as just another thing to do, but if I'm wired to be focused on everything else but me, why would I spend time with myself? Think about that for a minute. If I value everyone and everything else more than me, why would I spend time with me? It sounds weird but maybe we never thought about it that way before. So that's one thing. Another thing that might be keeping us from meditating is that maybe you don't believe in it or maybe you have religious reasons. I know a lot of Christian friends who they hear meditation and they're a little bit concerned because they want to stick with their Christian beliefs. And I grew up Catholic and Christian. So I understand that feeling like you want to stick with Jesus and that's it. And then when somebody says meditate and think about this and think about that, it feels a little bit scary because it's like, well, wait a minute. Is that in alignment with what I'm believing over here. Off the top of my head, I can say that meditation is in the Bible. You could say prayer, something like that also. And we talk a lot about in the last episode, we talked about being with people in your mind. That could be prayer experience and things like that. But. I think that meditation sometimes has an Eastern flavor to it and sometimes we think, well, what's the point of sitting there and just not thinking of anything? Actually meditation is quite a dynamic experience when you have some knowledge base and a good attitude towards it. And I find for me that the self care attitude is the best attitude to have. That I have areas of my life that I'm not satisfied with and I doing everything I can to change them or maybe I feel hopeless that I can't change them. And so meditation is a way for me to spend some time with myself, get an idea of what's going on in my mind and maybe be able to get some insights and make some changes. The next thing with meditation is maybe you were never exposed to it. I was never exposed to it growing up. In my family, my parents decided that the church was, hypocritical at some point and we stopped going to church, but I still loved God and I, still considered myself a Christian. But I was never exposed to meditation until I started doing Hatha yoga, the exercise yoga, and I started getting into spiritual study on my own. And then I. I understood a little bit more about meditation, but it wasn't until I found this, what I'm talking about here, when I found the Brahma Kumaris and learned this spiritual knowledge and learned Raja Yoga meditation, where it really made the connection for me. This is about me. It's not about becoming something else or trying to force myself to go zone out or go against my religion or anything. Or go against my family or against life or, no, it's nothing like that. It's about finding out what's going on in my mind. It's quite scientific actually, but whatever I was exposed to wasn't telling me anything about it and I didn't really know. So you may have never been exposed to it. Another reason that maybe we don't want to do meditation is we're a little bit afraid. And, I kind of want to say there's a reason to be afraid. Not really a reason to be afraid, but it takes courage to face yourself. Part of the reason why I called this podcast, the spiritual American, I could have called it anything, right? I could have said the spiritual aspirant or I could have called it anything, but why did I call it the spiritual American? And I think it's because as Americans, there are certain attributes that Americans have, at least in my experience. And one of them is that we don't want to be dominated. We want to be powerful. We want to be free. We want to have liberty. We want to be able to do and be ourselves and so forth. That's part of being American. But when it comes to our mind, maybe it's a little bit scary. To think that I have to be responsible for what's going on in my mind. I know that it takes courage But I think that Americans can handle it. I think that we're brave enough to actually face the truth of what's going on inside my mind and many of you have who have seen the other episodes Know that when you start meditating you're probably not going to have a peaceful existential experience the first time you meditate. What's likely going to happen is that you're going to sit down and you're going to say, okay, I'm going to sit here for 15 minutes and you're going to put on a guided meditation or we call it a commentary and you're going to sit there and your mind is going to go crazy. It's going to go to this, it's going to go to that. You're going to feel a little uncomfortable. You're going to feel, you're going to watch the clock, whatever. All this stuff is going to be going on and you're probably going to get up from the meditation and think, nope, not for me. I wish I could emphasize and share through the camera. How close we are to freedom and how close we are to self respect and how close we are to self love and authenticity. We're this close all the time. Our mind is showing us all the time where we are. We just need a little bit of knowledge, a little bit of patience. And a daily practice of self care with courage facing what's going on in my mind. We had a class, I had a class yesterday with a student that came in and she said that she had PTSD. And of course I didn't get into the details because PTSD is a diagnosis that could be anything from, um, You know, something in the family to, you know, violent, something violent happening to war, to any, it could be anything. And I, the principle that I gave is that the principle works for anything, but we all need to be responsible for how extreme our experiences are. Like, like I say, often there's a continuum, right? There's like the middle ground and then there's the extremes. If you are having severe depression, severe anxiety, post traumatic stress syndrome, or anything where you're really having a hard time functioning, I would say go get help also because the point is not to sit in meditation and then fall apart. That's not the point. The point is to sit in meditation and be able to be with yourself and see what you've created in your mind. There's another episode where we talked about karma and taking responsibility for ourselves. So I know that as Americans, we want to take responsibility, I'm going to take responsibility. I'm not going to depend on anybody. I'm not going to, be a slave to anybody. What's that thing? I'd rather die on my feet than live on my knees, right? Well, ask yourself, am I being dependent on my mind? Am I being dominated by my mind? I know I was. Whatever the thinking was, I was believing it, reacting to it, all kinds of stuff. In spirituality, it's not necessary. We're this close to being empowered, freed, content, but maybe not at first, but at least empowered, right? So I want to leave you with this. Do I have to meditate? No, but I want to say, yes, please do meditate and have courage to face what's going on in your mind. I created it, whatever it is. Maybe something happened. I created the memories. I created the emotions. I created all the decisions that happened after that. I created it. I need to take responsibility for what's going on in my mind. I want to say that's the most courageous thing that any human being can do is to take responsibility for my mind. So again, do I have to meditate? I hope that this little talk helped you kind of look, maybe you could see yourself in some of the examples, that were given. Take a look in the description below. There's meditations there. Release your wings. They're five minutes long just to try it, to see how it goes. There's free online meditation class. The Brahma Kumaris website is there. All our classes are free. You can take a look at the spiritual knowledge. See if it looks good to you. Soul, supreme soul, karma, universal spiritual knowledge. All of this helps us to become empowered. So, I'll leave it there. I hope that you got something out of this and our slogan is Heal, Empower, and Serve. And if you've been watching these episodes, you know that it all happens in the mind and meditation is the first activity that we do to try to access the mind. So we get in there and find out what's going on. So I'll leave it there and until next time, take care. Um, uh,
