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. Today's topic is creating goals. It's the beginning of the year and this is a time that people make goals and we're very much, we're very familiar with the kind of goals that people set. So I'm not going to go into that kind. But, I would like to introduce, or we're gonna, give some examples about setting certain goals. It's like a secret, right? Certain goal, or one goal, that will actually help you to attain the other goals that you might be setting yourself. Like Ken was just sharing, generally, when people make goals, is it fair to say that maybe it's financial or physical or related to health or something like that? And that's fine. That can fit into this. But we kind of came up with, we came up with like four general categories. And maybe you've heard this before, but again, we're going to tell a secret at the end. There's going to be a little bit of a secret. The categories are physical, emotional. psychological and spiritual. And so we can start with the physical and we could say, it's funny. And now that I'm, now that I'm thinking about this, I'll tell the secret up front, spiritual and self care are, I think basically the same thing. Yes. So I'm going to say that again. Spiritual doesn't mean something way up there that nobody can attain. Or, it's actually self care. It's the same thing. And that is the one that's going to help you do everything else. So that's the secret. The secret is, you have physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual slash self care. That last one is going to help you do everything else. So, and we'll give examples from our own life too. So physical obviously means goals for health, goals for money, goals for your environment, goals for your situations, that stuff. That that kind of thing emotional is goals for your feelings I want to feel better. I want to feel safe. I want to feel happy. I don't want to be upset anymore I don't want to be anxious anymore. Those kind of goals are can actually be quite powerful Sometimes we talk about goals in terms of positive positive goals But sometimes it's about stopping the negative right like I don't want this anymore You And that can actually be a very powerful moment, right? Yeah, because I was thinking, what is it that really, if I can make even tiny changes towards this goal, that it actually impacts me deeply. And that is self care. So, being on this, spiritual path, I find that I'm very much aware of my thoughts and my feelings and emotions. My attitudes, reactions, things like that. And I'm realizing that I can be the cause of a lot of sorrow to my own self. So one of my goals would be, let me pay more attention to treating myself right. And I don't know how you think of that. Yeah, I mean, I, so, let's go quickly to psychological. And when I wrote psychological, to me that means self respect. How do I feel about myself? What do I think about myself? What's my attitude towards myself? Sometimes we get into situations where maybe, Insecurity takes over or jealousy takes over or resentment takes over or worry takes over. If I feel confident, none of those things happen. So I think confidence and self respect is a part of our psychological well being. But again, we go back to that self care. If I have an attitude of self care, That self care can be the umbrella under which all the rest get taken care of. But I am going to add the spiritual aspect to this because there's a principle, I guess it was Einstein, if I, the scientists who are listening, I might say it wrong, so forgive me if it's not Einstein, but he said you can't change a system from inside the system, right? There has to be an outside force or you have to have a break from something to be able to see it clearly. So, for instance, Ken was giving an example, earlier today when he was saying if you grew up in a house or if you grew up in a family in an environment and that's all you know, Your mind and your emotions and your psychology and everything and your life expectations and how you think things are, it's all programmed in based on that. The only way that you would ever be able to change that is that you would have to be exposed to something else. So spirituality, I'm going to say right now, spiritual aim is about exposing yourself to something else. and letting it influence you. And that can be anything that feels right for you. We belong to the spiritual organization called the Brahma Kumaris is a worldwide organization and we give our classes for free, which I really like, that we give classes for free. We teach universal spiritual knowledge and practice meditation. And there's no gurus and, you know, You know, women run the organization. So interesting organization. Uh, it's not for everybody, but for us, we follow this. We were following this. So what are we doing? We're meditating. We have a spiritual goal and we're spending time focusing on things that are not ordinary, focusing on things that maybe that we, that have nothing to do with the way we grew up or the way we thought. And actually in this podcast, everything that you're hearing us share about, Is because our experiences are based on us implementing this spiritual knowledge and understanding and that's what we're trying to also impart in these episodes One thing take into consideration the changes in the world in terms of economy in terms of there's so many things changing I set my goal in this way that I'm not going to ask for the impossible, but within these changes, my goal would be, how can I witness, observe these changes, but stay beyond the influence of it? Like, I don't want the change to take away my happiness, to take away my contentment, to take I want, in spite of all the changes, I want to experience growth within me. I want to experience, my spiritual aspiration are maybe in the relationships that I am in. That I can improve those relationships. And these are things that the change, the changes in the world should not influence that. I can't stop the world from being what it is and where it is going, but I can be more self aware. I can become a little bit more in charge of my feelings. So that's one of my goals, considering the situation. One other thing that I've noticed about having a spiritual aim is that you're also able to face things as they are. You're not necessarily fighting reality. I mean, maybe we've all had that experience where we've resist. Some things happen and we just can't accept it. We resist it. We fight it. And I think not only are we Ken was just sharing, like you don't want to be influenced by the changes, but it also increases my capacity to be with what's actually happening and not be disturbed and not be at odds. And I would call that a spiritual goal because you're everything is the way it is, but I'm independently becoming responsible for my own consciousness, my own awareness, my own mind, and my own response or no response or whatever my own perception. I'm becoming aware of my own perception. By the way, can you hear? I hope you can hear how that kind of aim and that kind of attention would impact everything else. It's going to help me get over addictions and help me with my health. And by the way, everything that I'm about to say right now, I've done, okay? Personally, I've done. Get over addictions with food and other kinds of addictions, get off medications and heal my body, focus on actual optimal health. That all came from working on the spiritual Psychologically Sometimes I think I still work on it, but the the ability to know my own value and to be able to appreciate and honor others value All the time regardless of behavior even my own That's also a spiritual because of spiritual So and then the emotional part where being able to allow my emotions get in touch with my feelings like Ken was sharing, like aware, aware of the thoughts and feelings, aware of the emotions without reacting, not lost in the soup, so to speak, but actually having some mastery. That's also coming from the spiritual aim, spiritual and self care. You know, in our, um, In the medical profession, we have seen how mental illness is increasing, suicide rates are going up. So mentally, there is a toll people are paying for all the challenges they have to face. So I think it's a worthwhile goal for me to make myself more resilient. And to be able to be maybe an example of, of a choice we can make. The way we can direct our energy towards our own self care. To be strong enough that you can actually help others. And what I mean help meaning we might not always able to. to help physically, or wherever that is possible, yes, let's do it. But on, on the other hand, rather than looking at something and be very negative about it, I, it's a habit almost. It's what a lot of people do. So we follow what everybody else is doing, but it takes a toll because it gives, it eventually, you become, you feel helpless in that situation because it's like people are complaining, but They feel helpless in fixing it. They can't change it. They can't change it. And it's not like we don't try. I mean, sometimes I say in classes, like if psychology was enough or all the thing, all the self help groups and everything, if all of that was enough, we'd all be better by now because we all tried everything, right? Can I, can I challenge us to share our spiritual aims so that we can share, so you can see what it sounds like. I mean, yours, everyone's will be different, right? But I'll share mine. So my spiritual aim is that when I Started this spiritual journey like seriously started this spiritual journey. I had the experience of Being with god like directly and you could say supreme soul or like Being in such an elevated pure state that it was like I it was like a direct experience of god direct experience of the Father So that I had so my aim is to be like that one. That's my aim. So what does that mean? That means that i'm wise and pure and loving and generous and egoless and part of what we study is all about what the soul is all about and what is God all about and And it doesn't have to be this. You can be in any religion and study that you could be in any religion And come to some kind of understanding for yourself and Some kind of spiritual aspiration based on that understanding. Okay. So that's one aim. The other aim, that's the aim that I want to be the elevated aim. The other aim is that I would like to be so strong and so powerful that I will get to absolute purity. That nothing will stop me from getting to that stage, meaning no ego, no temptation, no nothing, no illness, even death is not going to stop me from getting to that. That's that. And then the third part is that of my aim is that I would have the capacity to love the world. That who I am, is a blessing to the world. And that I have that capacity and that awareness of that relationship with the world now, those are my spiritual aims You want to share yours and mine is to increase my my understanding and knowledge of what is the difference between consciousness and and matter and how does the mind work and Human beings have this, this intelligence in them, this, we might call that an intellect. What is that? How does it work? Can it be purified? Can it be changed? And, and can it be made strong? The, the other thing about my personality, does it have to be fixed? Can I change certain things? Can I create a personality that is more in line, with my goals? Yeah. So these are things that are available to us. It is there for us to create. That's the one unique thing about humanity, that we are different from animals in that way. So yeah, my goal would be about having deep understanding of these things. And I think now that the physical part of the world, me working, it's, a chapter that has ended. Now this is the one, this is, I, I think life is now beginning for me. Because he just retired, so that's like it's, something is opening up, right? Yeah, so this is like a beginning, and why not? You know, you have that opportunity, the knowledge is available, it is free, and there, just have to, to focus on that. So, just in closing, I'd like to say that we, just to put it all together, And I'm sure I can speak for Ken too. These spiritual aims have helped me with every aspect of life. There hasn't been one aspect of life that hasn't been impacted and helped by having these spiritual aims. It makes everything else seem more manageable and easier to handle. And then of course we make goals, okay, we're getting the lanai enclosed where, you know, we're going on a trip. I want to get to a certain level of fitness and this goals along the way, obviously this is still life, but our inner world can be so enriched by having a very high elevated spiritual understanding and aim, and then also a commitment and a, love for yourself, like self care. Is there anything else you want to add? Okay, so we'll end it there and hoping that you will have a happy and healthy new year, and you'll be able to set some unique and special goals just for yourself. That's it so we'll see you next time take care. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye When you walk into a room, life gets little sweeter. When I look at you, I see you are my, you are. My life. My life. My life.
