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 the Spiritual Relationship Podcast. My name is Ken Hanuman, and this is my wife, Dr. Anne O'Hare. As you know, we share our life with you the way we inculcate spiritual values in life. So it's a little bit of a different approach to teaching spirituality. Today, the topic is nature as our teacher, if you look back in, maybe in scriptures or in mythology, you'll see that our ancestors looked at nature to learn about life. And we all, I'm sure we love nature and it's, and if we were willing to be quiet and look and observe nature, we would see that are many spiritual values that nature can teach us and show us the value of, these qualities, these virtues. So I would ask Anne to give, what is her relationship with nature? Wow. I was thinking of my mom, actually. My mother and my father went to Africa several times. And one of the attractions I believe, I haven't been to Africa, but one of the attractions of Africa, I believe is this kind of untamed nature. That nature is there in all its brilliance without any interference from, human beings and mechanisms and machinery and everything. It's just kind of seeing it as it is. And I remember mom came back and said she think she thinks that that's God. Like when she saw that, she said, that's God. And I don't have that relationship with nature, although like Ken was just sharing, there's a lot of different virtues and qualities about nature, which I do consider to be spiritual. It's actually I'll just rattle off maybe two of them. One nonverbal, there's no language in nature. Yeah, it's, there's all kinds of communication that's happening, but there's no language like we use. There's no talking. The birds all know what to do. The gorillas all know what to do. The trees all know what to do. Everybody knows what to do, but they don't have any books and they don't have any universities, and the bird knows how to build a nest automatically, and the cat knows how to clean itself automatically. And the horse gets up and stands up after two seconds after it's born. And. I mean, it's just incredible. Yeah. Like there's an inherent, knowing or wisdom that is almost instinctive, with nature. And that's beautiful. You know, you look at scientists also, they get a lot of their ideas from nature and that is where the invention comes from. And, I mean, there's so much to learn and be grateful for, The other thing I was thinking of is harmony. Everything seems to automatically work with everything else. I just, it's amazing to me when I think about how human beings run the world. How do we run our world as human beings? Versus how the natural world actually works just fine. For instance, sometimes I give the example of a tree. Let's say we're in the Civil War. I'm giving a graphic example, but you know, they have pictures of thousands of bodies, like dead bodies on the ground or whatever. And when we see that. As part of our human history, we look at that and we say, oh, what a horrible thing. There was war and so many people died in their families and we're thinking of this and that. What are the, what does the grass think? What do the trees think? What does the air think? What do the bugs think? Like it's not, there's something very helpful for us, and I didn't know I was going to say this. Mm-hmm. I think. Wow, I'm stopping myself because it, what I'm about to say is gonna seem, I think, controversial. I think that we created a world inside our heads. We communicated it to each other through language and through time, and then we're acting it out. Yeah, but nature is on its own schedule. Yeah. It's kind of like, you know, when you're a child and think about when you're a small child, you're like two or three years old, four years old. You're sitting there playing, maybe the parents are having a discussion, a very important discussion about the mortgage, or maybe they're having a very important discussion about how they're gonna handle a family tragedy or something, or maybe a schedule of their, whatever. They could be discussing something that happened in the world that's very tragic or very important. The 4-year-old has absolutely no idea of what all of that is about, but the four year old's there, right? Interacting in its own world. That's how I think about nature. I think that it's kind of a hidden secret, hidden in plain sight. It's a hidden secret for us. If we can look at nature. Nature is there. Harmonious, peaceful, intelligent, beautiful, has its own dignity. Yeah. And that's spiritual. Yeah. There's an interconnectiveness. Almost everything has value. Everything seems to be beautiful important part of this fabric of our existence. it's amazing how everything has value and another way to look at nature too. In spirituality, we learn there are three things that are eternal. One God, the Supreme Soul. Then the soul, I, the spiritual being, the conscious being the soul. I'm presently sitting in the, in nature because the body is a part of nature. Yes. So nature provides me with the ability to interact with itself And is nature is gonna take the body back too. Yeah. It's not like we don't have it forever, do we? Go ahead. And so nature provides the playground, on which God plays its part out. And when I, when we use the word God in spirituality. We are talking about goodness, we're talking about these higher values of peace and love, happiness and power and you know, wisdom. The soul, the human soul is interacting with nature and with other human beings through nature, and it is actually able to create whatever it thinks and it dreams of it is able to play that out on this stage of the world of nature. And that act of creativity, nature allows for that. I mean, one thing you would probably believe and maybe you share this, is that it seems as if every single human being gets the opportunity to play out completely what is in them, they're able to put that out there through their behavior and through whatever accomplishment or their activities or role. So consciousness needs a place on which to, to express itself. Hmm. And that is why I find, people would refer to nature as the mother. Mother nature, mother nature, right? Mm-hmm. Then also, there's some culture that would deify elements. Like the sun, the moon, the stars, the wind, the water, ether, whatever they is. Why? Because nature constantly gives without and gives freely without expecting anything in return. And it's just natural to nature to do that. Well, that's another spiritual principle. Mm-hmm. It gives, without any asking for anything in return. It doesn't need anything in return. You know, these are very powerful spiritual principles. We know we don't, we always think about them usually in a sense of like, oh, I'm getting better. I'm selfish and I wanna become selfless. We're always looking at it as a fix. To how we are. Why not look at it as it is working right in front of us? It's already working in nature. Mm-hmm. Nobody has to tell, like, I had this one thing where I saw a video. There was a bird in a gorilla pen. There was like water and a little bird was like flapping and drowning in the water. The gorilla came over and picked up the bird and put it out of the water. Yeah. Did the, did the gorilla take a first aid class? Mm-hmm. Did the gorilla go to the Red Cross and figure out how to save birds when they're drowning? No. There's no education. Think about this. There's no education. So it's funny you're saying what is nature teaching us nature as teacher. Nature teaches us, by the way, it is not teaching us through education. It teaches us by the way it is. So if you're sitting in nature, so here's an exercise. You can sit in nature, sit in a park, or sit by the beach or sit by the water or sit by the woods or whatever it is that you like and sit there for a minute and reflect and say, what qualities, if I had to come up with three qualities that I would use to describe this scene that I'm in. What three words would I use? Maybe peaceful, harmonious, loving, something like that. All of that is spiritual. Yeah, gratitude It's such a match. Yeah. You know, it really is such a match, and I think that's why maybe we just think, oh, you know, I love nature and nature, but maybe we haven't really thought that it's an actual spiritual match. It's not just about relaxation. It's like meditation. Meditation is not just about relaxation. Mm-hmm. It's about discovering who we are and I think nature really gives us a clue, but we have to pay attention a little bit. We have to direct our attention with kind of an inquisitive, open myself up to discovering what the qualities are. It's so generous. We were, we're getting ready to put a garden together now, vegetable garden. And I remember in our last home we had a big vegetable garden. Remember when we planted the green beans? Yeah. How many green beans we got? Yes. A lot. I mean, it was six plants and we got so many green beans. We had to give bags and bags of green beans away. Look at how beautiful and how generous. Yeah. You put in like five units of work, you get 50,000 units of something back. Right. That's a spiritual principle also, if you put in this much effort towards your spiritual growth, you are gonna get 10 times, 20 times, 50 times, a hundred times back help. Yeah. The thing also, you look at human relationship, human relationship are meant to be fulfilling and, Maybe we're able to be happy based on the on our relationship. The truth is that as the world is changing, relationships are getting even less dependable. And when we go through heartaches and problems with human relationship, we tend to turn to nature because nature will soothe you or cradle you will sort of bring back some kind of peace to you. So that is beautiful too. And I find that some people have a problem with God and they might end up thinking God doesn't exist. And I mean, they're welcome to that. I, I don't think God takes offense, but the thing is that people might not believe in God, but they will turn to nature because nature does not judge. It treats all equally. Even if you're a pope or priest or, I dunno, any religious leader or saint or a criminal or whatever it'll give the same to everyone. And that's a beautiful spiritual quality. Hmm. Actually, we can learn the art of being happy if we truly pay attention to how nature functions. And we, it really, it relates to us. It's just so funny how it doesn't take much for us to get it. We're just not paying attention to it. I just thinking of like, we live by a lake and there's these little birds and just if I watch the bird, like let's say the bird is sitting there, like there's a bird sitting there and they go swimming. The birds go and then they dive down to get, I guess the vegetation down there, and then they come back up. And then they come out and I think they're drying their wings. Mm-hmm. Like they're standing at the side and they're putting out their wings like this to dry them. And I'm thinking like just to watch those birds or the little ducks or something, it's like I just automatically feel happy if I give myself a chance to focus on it long enough. Mm-hmm. And that's another spiritual principle. It's already there. Peace is already there. Love is already there. Happiness is already there. Harmony is already there. It's just that we're not paying attention to it. We're human beings. We're living in our own. In that other analogy in the parent arguing or worried about the mortgage world when the child is sitting there playing with their dolls and having a great time. Mm-hmm. And that's nature, nature's sitting there. So why can't I be like that? I can. And one last thing you get, you gave a good, you said something nice there about God. You said you don't think God takes offense. And the thought came to me like if I was God, let's just say, I'm not. But let's say if I was God, right. I wouldn't care if people didn't believe in me or not. What I would wish for is that people all feel peace. Yes. And that people all experience love because that's their right as human beings to actually experience that too, as living creatures in life, in the world. It is our right to be able to experience that. And not only that, we have beyond what animals have. We know it. They don't know it. They're just acting based on their instincts. We actually have the ability to experience all of that and know it. Yeah. That gives us such a beautiful compound joy. I. You know, sometimes they say God is the Ocean of Bliss. There's so many deep things to think about with this, but just the one thought I had was, I don't think God minds if we get stuck on one thing or another, he doesn't care. What he wishes for maybe is that we all get to experience our potential. So let us learn from nature because the way the world is going and the challenges we face. Nature will never break your heart. So with that. We'll leave it there and thank you very much for watching and we'll see you next time. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Thank you. When you walk into a room, life gets little. You.
