Episode Transcript
My name is Ken Hanuman and I've been practicing Raja Yoga meditation for over 40 years. In these episodes, I will share the experiences and insights I've gained from meditation and how I've integrated them into my everyday life and all my relationships. Welcome to the Spiritual Relationship Podcast. Hello everyone. Welcome to to the Spiritual Relationship podcast. My name is Ken Hanuman, your host, and the topic today is taking full responsibility. This is another class in karma. The problem in meditation is that the mind overthinks and when you try to sit and become calm, peaceful .Thoughts are just coming up and sometime they're strange. And, sometime it's all about what you have to do next or thoughts about others, what's happening on the news. I mean, so many thoughts come up. You're trying to sit quietly and say, let me stop thinking. It's not, we don't say stop thinking. What we want you to do is think positive thoughts, elevated thoughts, thoughts more about your own self, your true self, your spiritual self. And in the previous lessons we spoke about some of the things you can think about to see yourself as a soul with a divine nature of peace, love, happiness, wisdom, strength, power. And that this consciousness being sentient and is eternal. It's light. So these are the original, you can say the thoughts you start with and you look at the body. We have a body and we are talking and engaging the world, interacting and expressing ourselves through the body, but we're not the body. The body will leave eventually. So. Meditation should be along that line because you are trying to step away from the world. You, don't wanna be sitting in meditation and thinking about what happened on your job today, what somebody said, or what's happening in politics or the world you come to meditate, so you want to go on this inner journey. You want peace. So taking full responsibility for your past is essential to making the mind light. When you're taking full responsibility for your past, it doesn't mean guilt. Actually taking responsibility liberates you from the past and it empowers you. It's like a burden being taken off. So whatever has happened in the past, we look at it and there might be things that are harmful, there might be good things, there might be things somewhere in the middle there in a neither good or bad, whatever it is. But as long it's coming in, a is coming in your mind and it's bringing up a negative emotion feeling of sadness or missing or regret, or repentance or anger or blame or anything like that. You don't want to go through these negative emotions while you're meditating. You want to let go. So remember that whatever happened in your life, it didn't happen randomly. The laws of Karma teaches us. That there is a relationship between the past and the present. You've heard this a lot, I'm sure, from many other teachers, I guess if you've been reading and trying to do meditation, is they always say, be in the present. Be in the present, or try to empty your mind. But in meditation, we know this is a difficult process. And you need knowledge and one of the most important aspect of meditation is to learn about the cause and effect. Of what we think, what we speak, what we did, or what we're gonna do. Because actions to starts from intention or from your thoughts, you can't do an action without actually first imagining it, dreaming it, planning it, thinking about it, then you have to put it into words or put it into action, right? So taking full responsibility is not about blaming parents or blaming anyone or teachers or whatever. It's more about it is there in my memory. Okay. It is. There it is. It is bringing up thoughts and feeling we don't want that past say if I had trauma and if I had some difficulty with certain people or my teachers were mean to me or my parents or whatever, or, and then we have certain, because of those past experience, it's influencing or it's, making me behave in a certain way that I maybe I can't trust or I have difficulty in relationship with with this one or that one. Some people might have low self-esteem or feeling of inferiority. And then you find relationship being filled with anxiety. You want to change that, right? So meditation, you sit there, you see these thoughts, memories, okay, I learned from it, now I'm gonna change it, right? So this is what is taking responsibility. Learn from it. Accept it. Acknowledge it, it is there. The moment you don't create an emotion based on that memory, slowly, gradually, it will fade. It will change. How many times have you seen things that you remembered a while back that was wonderful for you. When you were growing up, but now that you're grown you might say, wait, I can barely remember that person. Or My memory is fading about this particular person, or whatever happened in school, or so on. So we could see how fragile memory can be. So why do we give it so much power by remembering and reliving it to especially the side, experiences. And then today. You know, in the present I find it difficult to think properly or think positively or think in a spiritual way. So we don't want that, right? We're trying to create something new in the present. We're trying to get the mind calm. Okay, now that I'm sitting in meditation and I can now, identify with the self as the being that is aware and is looking and is absorbing the mind and so on, and looking at the memories, I bring my attention back to the soul being peaceful. I realize I as a soul, I'm the master of the body. So these are thoughts that I'm creating in the present. I'm trying to experience that. I'm trying to have a feeling. What it feels like to be like someone who is immortal? You know, the soul is, is an eternal entity. What it feels like to be timeless because the body is in time, but I being, when I'm out, I am not, Subject to time. I'm outside of time. When I'm outside of the body. It's almost like when you are, let's say if you're very happy, you're having a great, wonderful time, right? And you, that's it. Time flies, right? And when you're sad and bored, time drags on. It's an experience. So when you're in meditation and you're having a wonderful time and you're peaceful, and you are learning, and you're experiencing something good, a good relationship with yourself, relationship with your past, your goals, your dreams for the future. You are feeling like you have a relationship with a higher being. These are the, in, in that state. You are creating happiness and peace. You're feeling that this is something that you can live with, that you can, you like to, make it part of your nature, your personality trait to become that is you. It' s in this state of peace that I, I feel whole again. I feel I have a greater self-esteem. I feel I, I have the power to resist the influence of the world or other people's opinion. I have the ability to control my reaction, you know, or I can act rather than react. So that's a, that's a place of happiness, that's a place of rulership, of, the past, the outside influence, right? So this is why taking responsibility is so important, because as you grow in your consciousness, as your consciousness expand into this feeling that you're an infinite being, connected to all one, with compassion and with love, you are feeling like everything is related, like we are sort of connected. And that you have a feeling of benevolence that, that you have a good relationship, right? As you spend more and more time there, you're beginning to realize that the, that which is in the past is very distant, almost like if it's was a, like a past life almost. So this is the beauty of taking full responsibility. In meditation, don't fight with your thoughts. Don't say it doesn't have to be there. Why should it be there? Because when you've been thinking something for a long time, for years and years, it has, it beca it became stronger. It is stronger. You know, you feel like you can't help yourself. Some people think that it is caused by some devil or some evil force. That's not true. It's really based on, you gave it life. If I can't stand certain people or if I feel that I am no good or, or that everybody hits me or God hits me or whatever. That belief, you had that for a while and just kept getting stronger and stronger. Eventually it seems automatic and then you don't have any control. And this is the first lesson, right, that we had, right? The relationship between your conscious, thinking your subconscious and you know, you wanna say deep subconscious or we say sun scars. Like there are certain deep, habits, things that probably you did over a long period of time or way in the past, and you might have forgotten. That experience. Like say for instance, this is a simple experience, example, like say for instance if you've had an experience of near drowning or something as a child, so you know, you're not really going back in the water or anything and anytime you go close to the water, like you just feel like very scared to go in and you wonder why. But that is because at that past experience. It can come up at times like, in the present. It can come up like that. So when these things come up, don't blame anyone. Don't blame anything. Don't blame God. Just it's there. Take full responsibility. And then you try to do something. You can face it. You can face, you can face the problem. And then learn how to change your reaction and your, your experience, thereby you're replacing the oil, uh, in meditation as we go deeper into meditation and we begin to, develop soul conscious self, self-awareness and, and the feeling that I have the power to create peace and love within me. I don't need it from somebody else. I don't need to be, I don't need it from any outside source, this internal world that I'm creating. This is something that will always be yours and nobody can take it away. In that state, you will let, you'll feel free and, karma starts to work in your favor because the way whatever you do in the present is to seed, that you plant. The harvest that you reap will be in the future. So you are creating the future. The future doesn't exist yet. It's yet to be created, and it's only created by the present just as how your past is influencing your present, right? So you, if your past has that power to influence your present, then believe that what you do in the present will affect your future, right? 'cause once you're in the future, then this becomes your past, right? Beautiful. It's a nice way to see the relationship between time and action. Karma and time goes hand in hand. So with that, I would close. Thank you for listening. Anybody who's interested in free online classes and free meditation commentary, go to the links in the description. So thank you for listening. When you walk into a room, life gets little, you. You.
