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 back to another episode of the spiritual relationship. My name is Ken Hanuman and this is my wife Dr. Anne O'Hare and today's topic is trust and faithfulness As you know, we've practiced meditation for a long time raja yoga meditation so We're trying to bring in to the conversation spiritual values and also to share how we actually apply it in practice. For trust, I would say trust is when you can rely on your partner. When you, you know that they have your best interest at heart and you don't have to worry. You know, it's like that exercise you see the soldiers will do. They would fall backwards and just trust that the other person will stop them from hitting the ground and damaging their head anyhow with something like that in relationship. I feel that as human beings Relationships are if at least you can have one enduring relationship, where you can trust and rely on someone, it does a lot for your health whether it's your physical health and also about Even a trust in humanity like you know that okay. I'm here and I can trust I am not alone I I can connect with someone else, you know this is where people will talk about having a personal relationship with God because It's the same principle of trust and knowing that you're not alone, because we are, maybe what's one of the unique thing about, about humanity is that they're always live in groups and in families. So what keeps them together? It is this need for, to be nurtured, to, to be cared for, to be able to share. Even this word yoga, it's about connection. So when we have deep relationship and relationship to give happiness, it is actually yoga also. Yeah. You know, I'm thinking of the word trust and, I feel like it's almost magic because it removes all the other stuff that was, that's there if you don't have trust. So if you don't have trust, then there's concern. There's worry, there's fear, there's uncertainty, there's instability, there's, you're like walking on eggshells, there's all kinds of things that you can experience in the relationships, not to mention how you feel inside yourself. What if I don't trust myself? Then I'm uncertain, I'm indecisive, I'm confused, I'm, oh my gosh, I had so much of that before. I feel that Trust is different than believing in something. Trust is like, I'm, I'm okay. Like, you know, when it reminds me of, it reminds me of like a baby, you have an infant and the baby is like laying on the mom's chest or something, how must the baby feel? Right. How must the baby feel, as long as the environment is calm. But how must the baby feel at that moment? That to me feels like trust. Like somewhere deep inside, there's a calmness, comfort, with an understanding around it, but you know you're safe, and you know that they're okay, you're okay, and there's love there. And it's a beautiful thing, I mean, we were just talking about integrity in the last episode, and integrity is, I think, the intellectual side of it, where like, you do what you say, so that People can feel stable around you because you're doing what you said you were going to do, right? And you, and you stick to the contract, but the feeling side of it, the heart side of it, I think is trust. You look at faithfulness, I would like to think faithfulness is related to trust because you, and faithfulness is different from loyalty. Loyalty is when no matter what I stick with you, whoever you are, whatever people, you you can have loyalty in, in gangs or whatever. Yeah, right. But in this, yeah, what are we talking about here is faithfulness. It's really about actually having faith in yourself because once there's trust, there's a measure of, interdependence that allows for freedom of expression and that values are shared and you can move together not only individually, but you're moving forward as a group or as a family. So that kind of. Unity and, your energies of focus, you know, and this is where like communities, you will see communities with people stick together for generations sometimes living in the same place. They just love their little villages and think all because they're shared values and people. And they feel comfortable there. So that would have called that more like faithfulness, you know, somebody just redefining a little bit all because I would like to show the spiritual underlying value on, um, of it and why is it so nourishing? Don't, don't see it that it's a commandment or that, and that you're going to get a blessing if you stay. No, that's not what it is. Everything about spirituality is about finding out how beneficial it is for you. Nothing will stick with you. Or you will never really follow something fully If it is not bringing benefit to you Naturally naturally naturally, right? You wouldn't you wouldn't keep doing it if you weren't getting something out of it. And that's why I love spiritual spiritual. I mean this topic of spiritual values, because I find that if people can One relationship or a few like good thing about it is that we have families You And you can have a good relationship between parents and children, husband and wife. There's certain relationships you can't run away from. They're there with you. Why not try to make it, better? Why not try to experiment with this? Yeah. I want to share a little bit about where I came from and what It feels like to be in a relationship where there's trust and then what happens then as a result of that. So, for me I grew up With my family like everybody else and again, this is not a personal thing. I didn't feel Comfortable with myself Whatever they were doing or not doing or whatever, I was not comfortable and I remember growing up and I felt that if I did what everybody else wanted, then somehow it would work out somehow. Like I do what everybody else wants i'm gonna people, please i'm gonna be The best daughter or the best wife or the best this or the best that and somehow it'll work out because I was trying to use integrity. Yeah, like I was trying to if I stick to my standard and whatever somehow it'll work out .You But my heart was not, I wasn't safe. I was hurting and people were treating me poorly and I I didn't feel like there was any way out. When I found this spiritual practice, the first thing I'm going to say that happened is that I opened up, there was some hope for me because internally it felt like at least I could trust God. If I could trust no one, at least I could trust God. And so opening up my heart to God was my first thing. Now you hear this in other religions too, but I'm going to share with you what I did. So in Raja Yoga meditation, the soul, you begin by understanding that I'm a soul, that I'm living consciousness. Sometimes we look at the point, you see the point is in between us here. We're showing the point of light, right? That represents the soul. Soul is not a physical point. But it's a point of consciousness, meaning it's a unique point and unique being of consciousness of living consciousness. I am that he's that you each one of you that's listening is a unique point of living consciousness. You're a soul. That's the first step. Second step is who is God. God is also a soul. God is also a unique point of living consciousness that I can relate to if I get on his frequency on that frequency. And what's that frequency? Peace, power, benevolence, love, wisdom, that level of peace and silence and concentration and understanding that I'm a soul and understanding that He's a soul, I can make that connection. That was the first step in Rajoga meditation. So what I did was I started practicing. I started practicing in my house. In my closet, actually, I would sit in my closet. I'm telling you that for a reason because I felt so starved of comfort or so starved of safety that I actually made a little space in my closet figuring like It's like physically it represented like okay. I'm safe here And then I would remember god and like I hadn't no other to turn to. But in that moment, I, the, the hope opened up and so I practiced. Now he was around because he was the one that introduced me actually to this, Raj Yoga because he's been doing it a lot longer than me. So he was around, he stayed like a friend, you know, for a while. But I remember you said to me one time, God was your only friend. Yeah, yeah. Because, so I'm saying this for a reason. Because we're talking about trust. And how can I open my heart if I don't feel safe? How can I open myself up if I don't feel safe? So I'm saying to you out there, if you feel like you can't trust anyone. That you feel like, look, you're not blaming anyone, but you just don't feel open, then maybe begin a spiritual practice and try to connect with God and start there. Because when I'm connecting with God, I'm also connecting with myself. If I say I'm a soul and God's a soul, that's a connection, it's a connection for me and it's a connection between me and God and that I can trust and that's how it started. Now, he was around and then because he's doing the same practice. So over time, our relationship changed into something else, which is great because now we were together all the time. Anyways, it was like no big transition. You are always together anyway, but we decided, why not? Become life partners too. So we did that too. But how did that build trust? Because I took a chance on myself because I gave myself that safe space, because I tried to connect with God and myself and I started to create this little safe space. Eventually somebody else was able to come in. You see, eventually someone else was able to come in, but now I can trust a lot of people actually. So what happened? Did everybody suddenly become trustworthy? What happened? What happened I'm going to say is that part of trust is really trust is not about the other person. Trust is about me feeling stable, feeling secure, and being able to extend that feeling of safety and security for the other person. That's really what it's trust is. So that was my journey. And now I feel like the trust comes because also if anything happens, I know I can handle it. Whereas before I didn't, I was way out of whack. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, now that you're talking about meditation. A lot of people find meditation difficult because they're going inside and they're visualizing, they're trying to stay in that experience, or they want to build Or have an experience of being outside of or going beyond the turbulent mind, but what I find with trust and faithfulness in the relationship If you want to experience love or peace You have to first find the peace and the love in yourself. Say I am peace So now when you when you're, uh, experiencing peace within yourself, then you'll be able to experience the peace from God. That's a law, by the way. That's a law. And you know what? I'm sorry. Jesus said it. What's the law? Love your neighbor as yourself. That's the law. A lot of people sit back and say, okay, now give me an experience. It doesn't work like that. And so if you look at the relationship too, when, if you meet somebody for the first time, you never knew the person, but then you said, okay, wow, she looks good. He looks great. I like, and you might say, you're in love, but you don't feel the love until you feel the love first. Right? Right. You feel it first. Actually, then you say I love, and then the other person, then there is a, an interchange, you start to relate in that way and then love can grow. So it's the same thing in meditation. So when there's trust and faithfulness, it's almost like there's a conversation. You can say like a personal relationship and the thing about that is that if you take your desires out of the way and all your long list of wants and desires out of the way, you actually can enjoy a friendship. And a relationship with God and then meditation becomes easy. And what are you doing there? You're actually developing the ability to have a loving, trusting relationship. And then other people show up. It's like a miracle and all the people in your family suddenly change. And it's like, and you think, wow, this is really amazing. But actually you were the one that changed. The thing people are looking for trust and love and peace from other people. The thing though, is that if you can experience it within yourself, and it starts to, Develop. Right, that faith develops, and you feel loved. This is a resource that I never thought was available. I always used to look at other people, or look at, some important person to, for them to guide me or something. But the thing is, that's not readily available, even our own parents sometimes, we're not, we can't rely on that. I'm not blaming them, that's their, how they grow up. But internally, when you have, when you experience this peace within yourself and the love and the innate wisdom you have, and then you're able to relate in this mental space or you're having this mental connection and experience. It's amazing discovery. And then you realize I can change as a result of the power I get from that. And that is where people have such a great experience in meditation that they would never ever leave it because it's something that will keep your mind healthy and you will enjoy trust and faithfulness. Can I just share something so neat, so interesting. If you listen to us right now, we both just described Raj Yoga meditation. We both just described it one of us described it like an intellectual side and one of us described it as a relationship But it's both both are there both are available. Whether you're thinking of it from a scientific point of view where you're looking at it like, okay I want to meditate to get this result or you're looking at it like I really feel lonely and I feel you know disconnected and I want to get connected and whatever It's going to work. You know why? Because you're getting in touch with yourself. That's why. Yeah. So very powerful. Yeah. So trust and faithfulness. Think about it and you will see it will really help you a lot. Don't think of it in the worldly sense that somebody should be faithful to me or somebody should know, take the other person. Work on the relationship with yourself. Why don't I feel trust? Because I feel afraid. Well, let me work on the fear. Why don't I feel trust? Because I feel, unsure of myself. Well, let me work on that. There are things we can work on on ourselves to help ourselves deal with how we feel. But you know what? It's hard because sometimes you're not focused, right? That's why we need meditation. Yeah. That's why we need to set aside a little bit of time for ourself. Okay. So should we stop there? Great. So we'll end there and we hope you enjoyed and we'll see you next time. All right. Bye bye everyone. Thank you. 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.
