What Lies Beneath

I wanted to speak about something that occurred to me. If it applies to me, maybe it will land on some of you. And then we’ll shift into a meditation to open up a space to explore what might lie beneath the surface.

I found something today that i had forgotten. I wondered what else I may have forgotten from my past stories - the stories we tell ourselves. And I realised that the choices I had made in my life were informed by a particular story. Perhaps you have a story too. Maybe it's time to

Transcript

Hi,

My name is Karen.

I hope that you're well today and I want to thank you for joining me.

Today I wanted to speak about something that occurred to me earlier today,

Because if it applies to me,

Maybe it will land on some of you.

And then we'll shift into a meditation to maybe open up some space perhaps to explore what lies beneath the surface.

As I headed out to work this morning,

I popped open the trunk of my car.

I always keep portable drinks there.

And I thought today I'm starting my day with a bang.

Living on the edge,

I grabbed a Pepsi.

No judgment please.

You should know that I'm not a teacher who exists in an ivory tower.

My struggle is every bit the same as yours.

I live in my mess and attempt to pick my way out of it to find grace and ease,

Just like you,

Whether you drink your Pepsi or not.

Anyway,

What caught my eye sticking out from one of those boxes stored in the trunk of my car was a bikini,

A bathing suit.

I first thought,

Karen,

You got to remember to bring that thing in.

You'll forget about it even being in here.

Maybe then you'll end up buying a bathing suit when you think it's lost.

The fact that it's a bikini is significant to my personal story and I'll expand on that in a little bit.

So being me,

I left the bathing suit in the trunk and climbed into the driver's seat.

As I buckled in,

A thought occurred to me.

What other forgotten things are buried in that trunk?

And I reflected on the story of the bathing suit,

The bikini,

Which was for various reasons a difficult purchase for me.

The story behind the article of clothing holds a lot of significance for me.

And if each piece which I've chosen to carry stored in my personal trunk had some story attached to it,

The question I had is this.

Why?

Why do I choose to carry certain stories and let others go?

Of course,

Then I wondered.

These are just the stories that I'm brought into awareness of.

I wasn't thinking about the story behind the bikini as I went to work.

What other things am I not thinking about that I don't want to let go of?

I imagine we all have things buried in dark places that exist only because we allow them to exist in our personal darkness.

So as a student,

I'm always in the work.

And the work right now for me is to try and find all the hidden seeds planted in those dark places that I have carried,

That I've fostered,

Fed and nourished.

And to see that they have informed my decisions for my day-to-day life,

Even without me knowing it.

The question then becomes what choices do we make and why?

You see,

I believe that we manifest our life.

If you decide that you are worthy of an amazing life,

You will grant yourself access to that amazing life.

If you believe that you are unworthy of an amazing life,

You're going to make choices that preclude you from all of those amazing life offers.

Now the story beneath the bikini.

I'm a breast cancer survivor.

My body in scars describes my fight like a map of where each of the battles took place.

I have the scars to prove that I'm still alive.

But am I fully alive if I have shame about the scars I wear?

I have no choice in whether I wear them or not.

They're just there.

I had no choice in getting sick.

Although I could admit that my life was an existence in stress.

So perhaps I did manifest it.

But in choosing to live,

Choosing to fight,

I moved through whatever protocols,

The surgeons,

The oncologists,

My family,

And what I needed to do to either dive into the deep end or paddle out to sea,

I suppose.

But I recognize I turn away from people when I'm changing in a public change room if I think they might catch a glimpse of my scars.

And I work in a field where body image can take center stage.

I was in fitness.

Now I teach wellness.

And I carry all of the old paradigms of what beauty means from the past.

I also know in my heart,

In my mind,

That this kind of thought is destructive to me and to everyone.

And while I protect my students from this attitude as best I can,

I realize that I'm still fighting that same monster that bubbled up to my surface many years ago.

My daughter and many of my closest people tell me to wear my scars like a badge of honor,

Like medals won for a battle hard won,

As though I'm more deserving than someone else.

And while that I think I should easily be able to shift into that mind frame,

I still struggle with it.

But I'm in the work.

I realized that the initial diagnosis and the many surgeries and chemo that followed were not really the traumatic tipping point for me.

My choices that followed led me within the dark place of shame to change my plans and how I move forward.

I knew that I was a fighter.

I didn't need to show the world.

I don't need to show the world that I'm a warrior.

In fact,

I'm trying to soften my warrior self because I instinctively react from a place of fear.

And my warrior self will win at all costs.

And knowing that there's something that lies beneath the surface,

I need to get to that.

But I need to get right with the true understanding that I am enough with my scars.

I am enough.

That my scars take nothing away from me.

You see,

The scars themselves didn't change me.

Physiologically,

I suppose they did.

It's evidence of something removed.

But it's really my response to the scars that resulted and are expressed as trauma.

The fact that I bought a bikini was me stepping into my discomfort and allowing myself to sit in the fear that is buried beneath the surface.

To no longer hide what was my past.

To bury what is my nature.

After all,

It was my warrior nature that got me through this thing in the first place.

So here I sit,

Walking through that tired old story in my heart again.

Knowing that how I would see someone else would not ever be how I allowed myself to see me.

Why was I holding on to this?

Why don't I feel like I'm worthy or enough?

You see,

There is so much more buried deeper than the scars themselves.

The scars are simply the surface.

To heal this hurt,

I have to go deeper than what lies on the surface.

And so if you would like to maybe have a look below your surface,

Get into the things that you've chosen to carry,

I invite you to sit with me.

To arrange yourself in a comfortable seated position,

Whether on the floor,

Maybe on a cushion,

Or in a chair.

Set your knees just a little bit lower than your hips.

If in a chair,

Place both your feet on the ground.

And imagine a string is attached to the back of your head and is drawing you all the way up as it connects to the ceiling above you.

You are in a tall and dignified seat as well as grounded.

Let's take a moment to check in and see how you've arrived today.

Notice any thoughts.

Not landing on one specific thought.

Imagine keeping the lens of your mind's eye softened as you look at the thoughts.

So you're not trying to see the details of your thoughts,

Instead just to acknowledge the quality of your thoughts.

Then allow each thought to pass,

Just as you would allow the breath to come into the body and to move out of the body.

Become aware of your breath now,

Without trying to change it or alter it.

Simply experience it as it's happening in real time.

Notice any emotions that might be present.

Without judging the emotions,

Just let them be.

Emotions change as quickly as thoughts,

So we won't waste a lot of time thinking that we need to change these emotions at this moment.

Now scan your body and notice any sensations within it.

Any tension.

Any places of discomfort or comfort.

Notice if any of the places in your body might actually have no sensation whatsoever.

You don't need to change this.

Just notice the sensation of no sensation.

And so we allow all of this,

The thoughts,

Emotions,

The various sensations in the body,

To simply be present.

Allow yourself some really nice deep breaths here,

Just to put a little bit more space between you and all of that constantly shifting and changing stuff,

The stuff in the trunk.

And now just let your breath move naturally.

Begin to observe it.

You don't need to breathe more deeply or more slowly.

If your breath is shallow,

That's fine.

If it's deep,

That's fine too.

Thoughts will come up and attached to each of those thoughts will be emotion.

So if you notice a thought or an emotion,

Rather than following the thought,

Invite your mind to get under it.

To get under the obvious and to see a little more clearly whether this is something that is serving you or ultimately harming you.

Because harm comes in many forms.

If you were feeding yourself but constantly underfeeding yourself,

You would eventually starve to death.

But in your mind you might say to yourself,

But I'm eating.

But I don't deserve to take what I truly need.

Harm can be easy to spot.

Harm can be easy to spot or can hide beneath the surface.

A long time ago,

Perhaps when you were a kid or an adolescent,

Someone said something to you or you witnessed something happening and the underlying information showed you of the risks inherent in the pathway ahead for you.

Maybe you were told that you weren't smart enough or you saw certain girls get asked out and other girls don't.

Maybe you were the athlete,

The star athlete,

But you understood that the expectation was that is on,

Not academically.

Or perhaps you'd like to acknowledge something that you did like.

Maybe you tried to say that you like something and perhaps you were told or shown that the thing which you liked was not appropriate.

So if one of these thoughts or emotions bubbles up when you quickly open the trunk and start piecing through what's in there,

You can know that you've carried it for a long time.

That you have likely made choices that confirmed the information and further reconfirmed the information to be true.

But here is a question.

What if that thought,

That information,

Wasn't true?

What if on the surface it seemed true and you repeated it so often to yourself that it felt true?

But what if it wasn't?

Even if there might have been some seed of truth,

It would still be misguided or confused.

And what if you heard only part of the information,

The part that might cripple you?

And if something wasn't true,

No matter how many times you say it,

It won't make it true.

As you hold and turn that understanding in your mind,

Perhaps you're reflecting now and maybe you're seeing some of the choices you've made in your life.

That these choices that you made were at least partially built on the foundation of a false understanding of truth.

You see,

As someone who has dyslexia,

That was never diagnosed,

I can tell you that there were some issues in my learning and that my means of learning is different than someone else's.

But that doesn't mean that I'm not smart.

But I certainly made choices that didn't take into consideration that while I learned differently than other people,

That the options in front of me should not be determined by something undiagnosed when I was a child.

So the moment that you become aware of information,

Something someone said,

Describing you as this person or that person,

That was an event in your life.

How you responded to this information,

The choices you allowed yourself to make after the event.

This is trauma.

Trauma doesn't have to be a newsworthy event or a lawsuit.

Trauma is happening every single day all over the world.

And we are just getting a better understanding of it and its long-term effects.

And we store our trauma in our bodies.

We feel it.

It directs us.

It can cause illness.

It can alter our rightful path.

It can limit us and diminish us.

If we could simply let it go,

We would.

But how can you let it go if you believe that it's true?

Let's go back to the idea,

The notion.

What if it wasn't true?

Imagine the life you might have without believing something which was negating all sorts of options that were in fact very available to you.

Would you have chosen to pursue a different career?

Would you have decided to stay with a partner who was disrespectful of your needs?

Might you have found a way to be truly comfortable in your own skin,

Not trying to live in a paradigm which was unhealthy,

To see your own beauty just as you are?

Not a single pound lighter or heavier,

Not taller,

Not shorter,

Wearing bright colors or dull.

Would you buy the bikini?

So we need to get under the surface.

And the longer that we've been perpetrating harm upon ourselves,

The deeper we need to go.

It's never too late to let go of these untruths.

It's never too late to step up and boldly choose what you need and what you want in your life.

Remember,

Whatever you think that you know might not be true.

And even if someone said it,

Even if there was a partial nugget of truth in their words or actions,

It has no understanding of who you are now.

Of course you deserve to be happy.

You are beautiful.

You are wise.

There is so much of you that is amazing.

Perhaps it's time to step out from under your own darkness and become who you were meant to be.

Just allow yourself to rest for a few moments now in your breath.

Now is the time.

Thank you so much for joining me today,

Sitting with me.

I hope the remains of your day are as beautiful as you truly are.

Namaste.

Reviews

A gentle exploration of who one really is to uncover what’s is holding one back from the true self.

Very Profound meditation!!! I have a lot of stories to examine. One at a time. What is true?

I often do yoga with these morning meditations, connecting body, mind, and spirit. Today I ended with humble warrior. Thank you.

What an absolute treat! So supportive and inspiring 💟 Thank you 💓

Wow, this is an amazing talk and it sure hit home for me! I needed to hear these words without even realizing I did. Like you I too have many cancer scars , but even more importantly are the scars that no one sees, yet I know they are present. Thank you. Namaste .

So important to try to discover the stories we keep hidden. It’s a constant journey.

I love this meditation because it resonates a lot with what I am experiencing right now in my life. A big thank you from the bottom of my heart for sharing your story and thoughts.

Fabulous. I appreciate a different perspective, a different lense from which to view my stories. Thank you 🫣

Karen thank you. I so appreciate your sense of humor your honesty, and your dedication. Be well.

Thank you so much I feel like this meditation was exactly what I needed!

Thank you from a fellow survivor. I can relate to the struggles. 🩷