Episode Transcript
My name is Ken Hanman, and this is my wife, Dr. Anne, who here, 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 the Spiritual Relationship Podcast. My name is Ken Hanuman and this is my wife, Dr. Anne O'Hare. And today we have. I think it's a very interesting topic; finding fulfillment in relationships. I'm sure you've heard this saying that we came alone, we come into the home to this world alone and we leave alone. But when we come in, we are coming into a family and we are in relationship. So what's the purpose? People have also have the question, what's the purpose of life and spirituality? And I think everyone would, would agree with this, that it is, we wanna be happy, we wanna enjoy relationship, we wanna be able to grow, and we have this innate, desire for creativity and newness and fun. So relationship is the way. It is, the field. It is the only place actually that you can able to fully express yourself and you can learn and you can share and cooperate. And what comes out at the end of it. Because eventually we all will end up separating. It is a gift we give to each other that stays with us. This is the way we've made each other feel. You know, so that's the gift, right? That we give. So today, well, I, I wanna ask Anne, what, what, what is her, um, how do you see fulfillment and relationship? Okay, so we were talking about this a little before we started, but I'll answer the question first. I think that, at least nowadays, the thing is, I want a relationship, like even as a, just a regular person, right? Mm-hmm. You're like, I wanna have a relationship. I want a serious relationship. I want a long-term relationship. I want a exclusive relationship. I, yeah, but what does that mean? Right? So today we had the idea that we would share from our hearts today, and we have a very, I feel we're very fortunate, the relationship that we share. And we are gonna take this opportunity to share each of us. I don't know what we're gonna say. Probably not so much new. We tell each other all the time. Yeah, yeah. But we don't know what we're really gonna say. But I'm gonna share what I'm getting out of this relationship, what it means to me. You're gonna share what you're getting out of it. And then we're also gonna share about our relationship with God, with the Supreme Soul, with the higher power. And the reason for that, and I, I'm saying this right now, I know all relationships have a role. All relationships are important. Even our relationship to the world, our relationship to service, our relationship to our children, our relationship, like they're all important. But I feel that the relationship of a marriage and the relationship with God both have a very unique and powerful potential. A marriage in the way I see it is a chance for you to kind of join with another person in a sense that you, nothing is hidden from you. You have nothing hidden from me. And in that there's a complete openness and a complete willingness to share and be together. And trust. And trust. Be open and transparent with each other. Yes. And to be like that with another human being. I think maybe a friend is the only other relationship that could be like that. But I would say a good marriage. You're also friends? Yes. I mean, we're also friends. So friend is that kind of equal, equal open, situation. But a marriage you are, you're kind of looking at life together. Yeah, like you share everything together, money, decisions, everything. You are sharing your life together. It's like you're walking hand in hand through life together with this one other person through everything. And the next episode we're gonna talk about is about life challenges, which we're gonna share about that next too. So for me, the thing I'm getting the, what's so fulfilling about my relationship with you is I'm gonna say that this is the first relationship that I have experienced apart from God, right? Where I feel like there's unlimited potential and there's also safety. There's a feeling like I can be myself. There's really freedom just to be how I am. There's nothing coming from you that I can sense that is in any way triggering something that would hurt me or make me feel bad about myself or make me hold back or make me doubt or anything. There's nothing about you that's doing that, and I don't know if that's just the way I see you or if it's just great, the greatest fortune or whatever, but that is such a blessing. So the what I'm getting out of this relationship, I mean, what can I say? I'm living my life with somebody who I respect, who I admire very much. Who I care about deeply, who I feel I respect. Like I said, that we are both on a spiritual path so that relationship that we both love God so much. Mm-hmm. That puts the way I see myself and the way I see you like way up here. Right. And all the other stuff that we deal with is in the context of that actually. So as I'm talking about the relationship, I'm actually going into the God thing now. Yeah, because our relationship is really based in that God context or that spiritual context. So I couldn't think of a better situation for me. Yeah. And every, as we go on in this relationship, it just gets better. Right. And we keep growing. We both are growing. Wow. Like amazing. Right. We both are growing. So that was what I had to say about that, I mean, when I, I, I never really had a thought that I would get back into a marriage and I mean, but the moment I, I met you, there was always that respect and regard for you. And I'm, and looking back, and I'm so happy that the relationship started out with respect and regard. So it was not like. If say, physical attraction or, people get married because you wanna start a family or anything like that. This was more about personality traits. This was more about the, like, it was not difficult to surrender to you, to be able to feel, I have not no guards to keep up. I don't have to be defensive, I don't have to. I mean, it's easy for me to, to, to open up and to, to say, this is who I am. And you never took advantage of that. You, we, you've never said anything, you know, like mean and disrespectful or, or, raise your voice and, and trying to make me feel bad in any way. You know? And I think that's because of the spiritual practice. We had. And as we went and as we, during the year, well the years together, we have never stopped trying to take care of each other's spiritual growth. It's as if like, your growth is more important than my own, but you had the same thing. So yeah. Then it becomes very, what you might call that. It works. Very responsive and, and helpful. Complimentary. Complimentary. You know, and that is what I find about this, about relationship. You can really, grow so fast. You can grow up really fast if you have this attitude towards not to be afraid of each, not being suspicious and jealous and thinking, I wonder if they. I wonder if they're doing this behind my, you know, this kind of a superstition. Mm, I mean, um, su suspicious and all those things. It does not helpful at all. Be willing to be open. If you really love and you really want to grow and be proud of yourself. In retrospect, later in your life, you, this is what you have to do. I just had a thought. Um. I think sometimes people think that spirituality doesn't allow for having a committed relationship. Yeah. That you have to be alone. Okay. I feel that like, I like what you said about respect, that there's an honoring and a respecting and that we are together, but we're also independent. Yeah. Like, we're definitely unique souls. Individual unique souls. Powerful, powerful souls. Yeah. Like I, I would never see you, like you are, you're my wife and you're supposed to do this. You're supposed to do that. Yeah. We bought our jobs. Yeah. And we are both equally. And I would never, and I would never take advantage and humiliate you and, and mm-hmm. And, you know, be disrespectful or, or something like that. Or take you for granted. Yeah. I mean. But that's just, but we were talking in the last episode about emotional maturity. So I guess what I'm saying is that sometimes people think that you can't, to be spiritual, you have to go live in a monastery or to be spiritual. You have to be, you have to change your life. We are here to say that you can be in a committed relationship and surrender to a spiritual life. Yeah, you can. And that enhances, and now we can talk a little bit about our individual relationship with God, but I just wanna say that for me, me personally, there would be no way I could see that I could have progressed as well, or as happily as well as I did without you Without this relationship, there was no way it was happening. And, and even though I was on a spiritual path for quite a while. I think God probably have figured that I need to learn how to relate with females or, you know, some of the attitudes and the cultural, uh, things you learn about, marriage or about women and how to be in relationships. Yeah. Like those things had to be straightened out. It wasn't, it wasn't right. Because, um, you can't think of someone as being subservient or their only, their only role in life is to take care of you and your feelings and so on. No, to be mature or to be able, not to be afraid, to be sensitive to other people, to treat others, like they're actually, like you put them first. They're more important because what I find is that when you look, when you look up in, in this way without losing your self respect, when there is a kind of an equality there in vision and you take care of each other in that way, the reward that you get is immense. It's, it's amazing. And so the before, when you think they're there to serve you or I am the man of the house, then you don't grow and you misuse authority a lot of times. Or you say things and you think people are, they have to put up with it. No, no, the other way around really helped me to be proud of myself. And, and because I can fully surrender to that relationship, the spirit is free and you become more able to connect with or understand God because God loves everyone and he loves, he always calls you children, right? You're my children. Meaning what? It's a family. Can I just say one other thing you just said about the men and women thing. On the women's side, I wanna say that to go through your life thinking that other people are more important than you is the opposite women. You have to start making yourself the most important thing. That is a big challenge. Just like it must be a big challenge to give up the other ways of thinking. If you're a man. For a men, they gotta give up that arrogance. For women. You gotta give up the dependency and the helplessness. Right. And men should be, should know when a woman come into a relationship, they're coming in, taught to please and yes, to make sure that the family, to hold the family together and to think. So you as a man have to be able to understand that and not, and, and use your, your authority or your power to help her to help not get, not take advantage. Yeah. To build her self-esteem. And to make her, better and and more grown up or, um, independent. Yeah, and independent and actually powerful because she's playing the part as a mother, so she would need to feel powerful. Just one quick example of this, then we can go on to the, the God relationship. One quick example of this was when I was feeling as some women, sometimes we get like this overwhelmed kind of a feeling. We had an episode on overwhelm recently and. I was saying, oh, I gotta do this and I gotta do this. And Ken said, this was so great, and maybe this is an example for the men out there. This was so great. He said to me, now we have a 17-year-old son. She, he's like, well, this weekend just cook for yourself. Don't cook for me and don't cook for Joey. Don't cook for us. Just cook for yourself. And it was like my synapses like were misfiring because my programming was so much in like that it's my responsibility to figure out what everybody's eating. It's my responsibility to figure out what's in the fridge. It's my responsibility to figure out what time we're eating and all like, and there's nothing wrong with that, I'm saying. But what he did, can you see what you did? Was you short circuited that? Yeah, that um. Conditioning and you said, we are okay. Just take care of yourself. Yeah. And it was not easy for me to understand, but I understood. 'cause this is where spirituality comes in really helpful. When you understand that the aim is for everybody to be independent, then I'm not gonna take that the wrong way. I knew what you were doing. Yeah. You were taking away the thing that was making me upset. Obviously it wasn't really, but you were taking away the stimulus and you were saying, look, take care of yourself. Yeah. And I don't feel bad about doing that and don't feel bad and he didn't make me feel bad, so I learned. See, that really helped me 'cause I. You look how many you could be in a relationship where a man could take advantage of you so much. Take advantage of that. Yeah, right. Totally. Take advantage. She's gonna do it. No problem. How many times have you seen this? Like you, if I wait long enough, she'll do it. You know? I mean, and we laugh, but it's not even funny 'cause Yeah, it's not, it's not even funny because especially if the woman's working. Yeah, I mean, I'm just being, this is like real life here. We're talking about, especially if the woman's working, you gotta be reasonable. Yeah. And then on the female side, we have to be reasonable too. You can't have a a negative attitude all day long, every day and expect the relationship to be good. Right. Okay. You have to, we have to learn how to take care of ourselves emotionally. And if you can't be happy, at least be honest, at least take responsibility for yourself. Like maybe I'm not, jumping for joy every minute, but at least then be honest, okay, you know, I'm working on this, I'm working. Take responsibility. Nobody would be mad about that. They would wanna help. I mean, there are times when you might have something going on, right? Mm-hmm. And you'll talk and you want to talk about, and you go on about you know how you feel, this, that, or whatever. And sometimes all I have to do is just listen and just, um, the same thing with me, right? If I'm going through something, let's say if I have jealousy or I have something, I would tell you how I feel and I will say, I, I, you know, whatever. And you are sort of, um, understand. It's almost like you're not listening to my words alone. You're seeing what's going on in my heart or something there, you know? Yes. And, and that's what you're speaking to. And then you, you are making the adjustment and then suddenly you can just let go and suddenly went, wow. Jealousy is a horrible thing. It's very destructive here. I'm not doing that anymore. I wanna get outta this here. I wanna enjoy this relationship. You know, and, and so that, that's what we could do for each other. And also what would it be like as females to really. We say like, we wanna be taken care of, but what if I take care of myself? Mm-hmm. What is that like? A lot of us aren't used to that. We don't understand even how to do that. So having a partner. The man have the man not taking advantage of that conditioning, and saying, you know what? Take care of yourself. And, and he still does it. I'm pretty good now, I would say, right? Yeah. But I'm pretty good now. Like if it ever comes up, you're ready to take something away. You're like, I'll do it. Don't worry, I'll do it. Whatever. He's there, he's there to come in and jump in and take something away because. If there's some agitation, you know, there's a little bit of overwhelm. You're coming in to help. Right. You know? But I'm not abusing either. Like we talked about this, you can't be abusive either way. You can't get abusive, don't do that. Right. So we're getting back into the male female thing, right? Because it's because it's so compelling. So that's I think, a nice little overview. So let's just briefly, so we finish this off the relationship fulfillment of the relationship with God. So there we go. Now we're at another level now. Yeah. One thing I, I keep saying I really like God as my friend. I really don't think he's there to judge me. And I don't think he punish, he doesn't punish anyone. And I've, I really learned that, uh, to be free and open with him, you can have your own internal conversations with him. Um, but most of all, in any action that I do, I sort of feel like I'm with him. in That way. And what I'm trying to get at here is that I'm not afraid of God. Mm. I because I know He's, and I found with him, and, you know, for the, for the many, many years that I've been in meditation, remembering and so on, there, there's no need for you to, it's, it's just like a human relationship. You don't wanna be walking on eggshells or thinking or be always afraid that, oh, I wonder if this person is. Taking in account of all the bad things and anything else that I did. Yeah, no, that's, that was that. I, I let that go completely. Mm-hmm. You know, I wanna feel free and easy, and I find He doesn't mind. He actually enjoys that kind of relationship. He says, come anytime you want. Think of me. When he says come meaning inside, you just think that you feel and you feel like you, you're getting some guidance and help. And at the same time, you are open and then at the same time, you're trying to use your time and your abilities and skills in a way that is helpful to others or nature or your body or whatever. That's like a spiritual life, like living a spiritual life, right? Yeah. For me, I feel maybe it's a little bit different. For me, I feel that what God gave me, first of all is knowledge. I was confused. I was confused about who I am, confused about why relationships didn't work, confused about why I can't seem to make myself better, confused about all kinds of things. So the first thing that happened when I got the knowledge was that I started understanding, when I'm saying knowledge, relationship with God, it means that I'm getting the knowledge from God. So I'm getting the knowledge, I'm getting spiritual understanding, and the confusion is ending. One of the things about my relationship with God is immense gratitude for that. Immense gratitude. There was no nothing or no one that could have given me that kind of stability that he gave nothing. Mm-hmm. If it was possible. It would've happened with all the effort I made before it would've been there. There was nothing. So nothing but God could have given that kind of stability in my intellect, in my, and in my heart, and I'd be so grateful and so, loyal to that Being. Yeah, because of that. The other thing about God is that I admire God. When we learn about who God is and uh, we have experiences, um, God is egoless and I admire that so much. I admire that God comes onto the scene, he gives knowledge. He, you know, transforms the world and then he goes and everybody forgets Him. 'Cause it's like, you know, think about even just, if you don't wanna think about it in big terms, you can think about it yourself. When you're happy and everything's going great, you're not remembering God. Yeah. It's when we are full of sorrow and we got problems that we start remembering God. Right? Right. So God doesn't need to be in my head my whole life. He comes when I need him. Mm-hmm. And I'm remembering him and so I admire that he only gets involved when needed. Right. He leaves and we have free will, let's say to our Christian friends out there. They understand that concept. He doesn't encroach on free will. And so I like that respect. So I respect God, I admire God. I'm very loyal and I have deep, deep love for that soul. It's not, it's my love is really kind of a love. That makes sense. Does that make sense? Yeah. It's a love that makes sense. It's not a blind following or, um, maybe a dependent surrender or something like that. Yeah. It's a, it's a real equal beings recognizing each other. And you could say Father child, or you could say, you know, something with parent child, that relationship where the child is looking at the parent, the parent's looking at the child, neither one is greater than the other. But they create each other and they support each other, and they, they admire each other and they build each other, and they, they have this relationship. So that's how I feel about God. And, and this what this, uh, relationship, this recognition and this understanding has supported me to, and inspired me to study, to do service, and to spend my life doing this. Yeah. Right. Being able to be in service of humanity is, is something that can be done easily if you have a good relationship with God. Yes. And I, I wanna repeat, do not have fear. Fear does not help any relationship. And I can guarantee you He doesn't know how to hit and he doesn't remember your past, He says. It is easy to forgive your, but it's just don't do it again. That's good advice. Right. It's good advice for your own heart. If you don't do it again, you'll feel better too. Right. You'll feel better too. You'll get a lightness, you know? Yes. So I think any relationship there has to be lightness in a relationship. There have to be a feeling of freedom. You're not on guard or always, um, wondering if, even human relationship, you don't wanna be in a relationship like that. Mm-hmm. Where you're afraid of the other person, whether they're, you know, same thing with God. You want it to be light and easy. Y you know, you know how, look at how beautiful it can be and how harmonious it can be. And how mutually beneficial. Mutually beneficial and mutually supportive. And I don't even have a word for it, isn't it? They really, maybe, maybe eventually, there's no word. Mm. You know, we use the word love, we use the word, but it's life, I guess. Yeah. Relationships are life. It's how life is lived, isn't it? Yeah. So maybe we should stop there. Yes, we can. What a beautiful conversation. Okay. So thank you for being with us. I hope that's given you all something to reflect on your own relationships, your own, if you're, we're talking about marriage today, but if you're in a marriage, reflect on in on that relationship, on the potential of that relationship. And then of course the spiritual relationship with God. Yeah, yeah. Relationship is an opportunity for you personally, to grow and to be happy. Look at it that way. Okay then. Beautiful. Thank you everyone. Take care. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. When you walk into a room, life gets little. You.
