Episode Transcript
My name is Ken Hanuman, and this is my wife, Dr. Anne O'Hare, we both work in healthcare and have been meditating for many years. We also enjoy a happy and fulfilling marriage. Come listen and see how to demystify spirituality and bring it into your home, your hearts, and in all your relationships. We will share our experiences and how we use these principles in everyday life. Welcome to the spiritual relationship. Hello everyone. Welcome to today's podcast. The name of the podcast is The Spiritual Relationship. My name is Ken Hanuman and this is my wife, Dr. Anne O'Hare. And the topic today is becoming emotionally mature. I'm sure you have heard people telling you, or you might be telling someone else, grow up. You know, it's time you grow up, become a man, you know, be an adult. This, so these words, emotional maturity. you know, people talk about, intellectual intelligence, you know? Mm-hmm. Then later on you hear about emotional intelligence. In spirituality though, the sign of growth is actually being emotionally mature, being able to manage your emotions, take responsibility. Being self-aware, sort of understand the way you affect other people, and, being able to manage, your reactions and your attitudes and your feelings in such a way that other people feel safe in your company or in the family. In any relationship, it's a responsibility, right? Yeah. When we were talking about this, it might seem like maybe a simple topic, but it's actually I think quite deep because how many of us grew up in homes where everybody was fighting or mm-hmm. There was a lot of arguing and a lot of misunderstandings and a lot of anger and a lot of sorrow and a lot of crying and screaming and whatever. Yeah. Right. I mean, whatever. I don't know. Some people I'm talking about generations like we grew up maybe different, it's different now. It's possible that it's somewhat different, but now we got the screens and nobody's talking to each other. Who knows what's better? Right. But I'm talking about the, what I understand, which is. The kind of emotional, immaturity, emotional instability and the havoc that it plays in relationships. Yeah. It wreaks havoc in relationships. Yeah. Like people have certain characteristics or traits, you know, or the habits that they grew up with, and they sort of accept this is who I am and they expect other people to accept that, accept them as they are. But not realizing that if you're causing pain in, in a relationship, if you're causing, people have to be afraid to be around you, or people are not sure whether you're happy or you, I, I don't know. It's like people have to walk on eggshells around you and therefore, that's not healthy for the relationship. One thing that I've seen, I mean from my own experience in meditation. You become very introspective and you begin to look, you're looking at your thoughts. You're looking at your, at your feelings. You're looking at these, maybe you are reviewing your behavior in different relationships because you would like to, you would like to enjoy relationship. You would like to have friendship. You would like to be able to cooperate with people and in any task, in any team. You want the team to succeed, the family, to succeed, everybody, to have a good relationship and for that to happen, what meditation did for me is that it really helped me to grow up. Yeah, I Can I just say it before, when we were talking about this, I was saying spiritual practice is the way to grow up relationships are where you show it. Yes. So relationships are not gonna help you grow up. Mm-hmm. If you're already an adult, let's say, we're not talking about children here, right? We're not talking about physically growing up. We're not, we're not talking about human development or childhood development. We're talking about adults. Mm-hmm. Who are maybe emotionally immature. I'm speaking about myself. I'm not talking about like other people are emotionally immature. I was emotionally immature. I was very kind of needy inside. Maybe I was overdeveloped in other areas, like maybe overdeveloped in terms of being able to speak or overdeveloped in terms of being able to perform or do actions and things like that. But in terms of maybe what you were talking about being cooperative, being able to feel comfortable with people or Yeah. empathizing with people. Yeah. Or not. Or not even like people being comfortable with me. I was not even aware of it at all. Yeah, that's the thing. There's no, that's emotional immaturity. Yeah. When there's no self-awareness. And then you get, then if people bring it up to you, you get defensive. Defensive. Yeah. You get defensive. And what's that about? Fear? 'cause you don't feel, I don't feel strong enough or I don't feel able to handle it. I can give one quick example. One time I was in a meeting at work. And we were in a big room, and I of course think I'm like the greatest thing ever, and I'm, I know the answer. I already figured out the whole problem and I have the vision to have fix it. So I stood up and shared and I shared the problem, how to fix it, like everything, the whole thing. And then it was kind of a, they, what do they call it? A mic drop? Like a mic drop moment. There was nothing to say after that. And I sat down, I was fine. My boss came over to me afterwards and she said, you know, you hurt so and so's feelings. I was like. What are you talking about? And she said she wanted to share something. She wanted to participate and you didn't let her participate. I said, what do you mean? I didn't let her participate. I didn't even talk to her. I was just being myself. Right. Can you see how that's immature? Yeah. You have like, it's not sympathetic, not mean or bad, but it was definitely immature. I mean, yeah. Would, now looking back, would I feel better about myself if I had let other people participate too? Yes. Right. But in that moment I was just thinking, I'm doing my thing and. I think that's what happens with emotional immaturity. I think you're thinking like a child, me, right? Like you're just doing your thing. You're thinking like a child. But as an adult there are deeper responsibilities and deeper obligations. Like I'm looking at say siblings. You fight, you play, you have great times together. But as you grow up. We have other problems or your sibling might be in their own family and so on, but we still need support from each other. So rather than keeping old wounds, you know, sometimes you remember that that's this person hurt you and you carry that all the time with you, and then you don't really, you don't really make an attempt to, reach out or to grow up. What happens is that the, you don't really get a chance to, to develop that relationship to where, to a point where each one of you can take the support of each other and feel that you can lean on each other anytime, because, life can be difficult and challenging. Could we call that healthy? Could we call that like a healthy relationship? That would a healthy, I mean, maybe a healthy relationship. Be relationship, you know, can I just interject one thing? Like how does, because I said before, maybe you can talk about how does spiritual practice help us grow up? Yeah. Oh, that's a actually that, like I said, that's the answer. That's the solution. I was really fortunate to come into, um. The spiritual knowledge or into meditation practice at a very early age because what I found is that spirituality enables you to turn the attention within. And when I say within, it means like you're aware of your thoughts and your feelings and your reactions and your attitude. The thing is that when you are in a group, you have a lot of examples around you. Um, not everybody's perfect. There might be one or two always. You might find some people are very good in with certain behaviors and certain virtues or good qualities. While they might have some weakness, in some areas. But the thing about being in a spiritual group or about constantly studying. And having the goal that you like to become more resilient. You like to be more calm, more peaceful. Even people would worship saints and, people who are you can say what they're in this society. They're like lights. Mm. You know? So why? Why is it, I mean, why they're able to do that and why I might still have difficulty in relationship? So in spirituality, in meditation, when I go deep down into myself, become more self-aware, I am realizing that if I have the goal to become cooperative or helpful or empathetic, then I begin to see that certain words that I use, certain language, certain reaction, I realize that some of those habits that I probably had growing up, they're not appropriate. Or maybe they need to be polished. They need to be improved upon. Sometimes a simple thing as changing the words not being impulsive. Hmm. Impulsiveness is a big thing. Big thing. Yeah. Mm-hmm. And know, learn how to handle criticism. Develop some humility. Yeah. Being able to be patient within, know also to learn how to set boundaries in relationship appropriately, appropriately. Mm-hmm. Because there are times that people can become like a pain and you, they might not be willing to change and they might be very dependent and they want you to be always at their beck and call or you should be serving them or put up with them. But you might say, no, I don't need to do that because I might be enabling your behavior because you're not exactly helpful to yourself and maybe you're causing some problem in the team or in the group. So you set boundaries in those cases. So spirituality has actually helped me to think more of others, to listen more to others. And then I realize when I, have that patience or that maturity to, to be able to pick up that I can actually give something to this person. Rather than spend my time proving to them something or I really, I, I want them to listen to me. I know what is Right. You don't know or Yeah. Like you're complaining that you're not getting what you want from them. Yeah. Instead of complaining that you're not getting, that, we're not getting what I want from them. I start being sensitive to what I can actually give and provide. Yeah. That's emotional maturity. That's emotional maturity when you're starting to turn it around. Yeah. A child has to take, right. Immature means I have to take, I don't have anything to give. I'm not grown up yet. Grown up means that I actually feel like I'm giving something. Yeah. I have something to give. I mean this, that's the thing about a, a child becoming a teenager and that's what you expect them to be, right? Yeah. But there are some examples if you, between husband and wife, where one of them still, they're very sensitive. They are very reactive. They yell and get into a rage easily, or they have so much they feel a wife should behave this way or their, or their husband should be this way. And there's a misuse of authority. Yes. All because you have some power, in a family or in, in a group. People who are immature tend to misuse maturity. Mm-hmm. And, uh, then the whole team, the whole family suffers because of that. You know, I'll give one last point and then we'll probably wrap it up after this, but the one last point I, I thought of, how does spiritual, effort and spiritual practice help us grow up? I think because true in our, in what we're studying, the way we see it. That we are learning, the spiritual knowledge that we're learning. Spirituality really is about being independent. Yeah, I think that's a foundational principle. You're becoming independent. You're becoming, you're not asking for anything anymore. You're not depending on anybody anymore. It doesn't mean you don't interact. It doesn't mean you don't, you can't cooperate or participate. It just means that internally, personally, I don't feel like I need anything. I don't feel like I need to take anything. And what does that do? That means I don't need to manipulate, I don't need to get angry. I don't need to. You see how that works? Yeah. It's a really interesting thing. The more independent I become and how do I become independent? I take a look at my thoughts and feelings. I take care of myself. I set boundaries or whatever, and I become independent. So two things happen. One, I stop manipulating and getting upset and reacting and whatever. And the second thing is I start to realize it actually and get sensitive to what I can give. Yeah. And that's when we turn it around. Right. And, and when you look back at your life, you're happy that you did that. Yes. 'Cause your relationships are preserved. People's vision of you is one of respect or regard. And at the end of the day. You love yourself, you feel good about yourself. I mean, how many of us can say that nowadays, that you really feel good about yourself? I really feel spirituality is the way that we learn how to feel good about ourselves again. And that's emotional maturity too. Yeah. And, and when people are quick to anger, the reason why people become angry is because they don't have any control over the situation and they're trying to use violence to control the situation. Well, you could say they're afraid and then they don't know what else to do. So they're lashing out because they don't feel like they can, they don't know that they can do anything about it. So they try to control by stopping the situation or whatever. But either way, you can see how that's a kind of a limited, we're calling it immaturity. Mm-hmm. But it's a limited. It's unfortunate because a lot of violence and sorrow comes outta that. Yeah, it's unfortunate there. There's another thing to call passive aggressive. Yeah. You know, I don't know anything about that. What is that? Please? I was the queen. Yeah. But I, I'm, I'm glad that sarcasm, the queen of sarcasm. Oh my gosh. There's so many ways we play. Yeah. But I wouldn't talk because then what about, what about making jokes? Hostile jokes. Okay. Right. So can I say, I'm sorry, hostile jokes. Yeah. Sarcasm. There go guilty as charged. I shouldn't tell you about it, however, but see, we're laughing because we all have it. This is the point. Maybe we can end on this. This is the point. We all have it. We all have to grow up. Maybe we had one limitation or another growing up. Maybe we weren't able to work on our feelings before. Maybe we had difficult circumstances, maybe whatever. With spiritual practice you're learning. I'm a soul. My nature is peace. I'm learning how to look at the mind. I'm learning how to quiet myself. I'm learning how to take care of myself. And as I do that, my self-esteem grows, my confidence grows, and then begin like I said before, it starts to shift and I begin to be sensitive, and then of course I'm gonna do what's there to be done. Yeah. You wake up every morning and you are a student. It's a great, way to start the day. Very good. Good. Alright, so should we stop there? Yes. Okay. So I hope that gave you something to think about. It's an interesting topic. I think we talked about it pretty well. So thank you all for joining us today, and we'll see you next time. All right. Thank you. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. When you walk into a room, life gets little. You.
