"I'm Not Good Enough": Releasing The Spells We Are Under

There are mantras repeating in our minds that act like spells. Because they are repeated so often, we remain spellbound and trapped regardless of what life presents to us. This is the first of many talks about these spells... the first being "I'm not good enough". Time to break free and truly live! This was originally a live talk here on Insight Timer.

Transcript

So I want to talk about the spells that were under.

And this came to me one day,

I was walking downtown Toronto with a friend of mine and she had said something that her friend was struggling with.

We were talking about something her friend was struggling with.

And she says,

Well,

He just figures this.

And then we would talk a bit more and she'd say,

Well,

He just figures this.

And she kept coming back to this one thing that he always repeated.

And that's when it dawned on me that so many of the things that we struggle with or the things that we feel stuck about,

We actually have a line in our mind that we repeat and that's the stopper.

That's what makes us believe we have no choice.

That's what makes us believe that we can't make change.

This is just the way it is.

We're stuck.

And I realized how much this is like a spell.

Right?

If you imagine,

You know,

The storybooks and,

You know,

Somebody comes along and they curse you and they say,

And you will not ever have a great crop ever again or something like that.

And you think,

Oh,

And if you have any faith in this person,

If you have any fear around this person,

What happens there?

You repeat what they said over and over again.

You repeat it.

Right?

Does that person actually have magical powers over you?

Because what's weird about a spell is no matter what other people say,

We repeat the spell.

Right?

Someone else says,

Yeah,

But look at all the crops you had.

You had such a great year.

What are you talking about?

Oh,

Well,

The next year is going to be bad then.

And then next year happens.

And look,

You had all this excellent bounty.

I know,

But there's a curse.

And it doesn't matter what other people say.

We just keep repeating this thing that truthfully doesn't make sense.

It's not based in reality.

And this is really,

Really interesting.

So the first spell that we hear so often is I'm not good enough.

And this spell is a real,

It's a really strong one because it's societal.

It's not just individual.

There are very few people in the world who are not hit by this club.

Right?

We don't have this mantra repeating in our minds.

And yet it doesn't matter how many people say,

What are you talking about?

You're a really great person.

No,

Well,

Maybe.

Yeah.

But inside,

I'm not good enough.

It's such a quiet thing.

It just sits there and repeats itself.

Maybe it hides in it and it tries to pretend it's something else.

But it goes on and on and on.

And it doesn't matter how many people say,

But look at all these great things you've done.

Yeah.

Still doesn't matter.

I know,

But look at all these people who love you.

Yeah,

It doesn't matter.

Why doesn't that matter?

Like why,

How are we basing,

Where are we basing this opinion on?

Because it's not an opinion.

It's not an opinion based in reality.

It's a spell.

And it's really important to understand that we are in control.

Krishnamurti was a spiritual teacher.

And he,

I really,

I mean,

I think I'd heard of Krishnamurti,

But I really heard about him in his friendship with David Bohm,

The quantum physicist I'm all about.

And one of the interesting things that Krishnamurti spoke about or taught was that our entire life is formed by our thoughts.

It's not a new concept or anything,

But this was his primary teaching or one of his primary teachings.

Now think of this.

If my entire reality is created by my thought and thoughts,

If I have a spell that I am repeating over and over in my mind,

I create my life based on that spell,

Even though it's not true.

It's really interesting to be able to sit and look at these words,

These mantras that flow through our minds and say,

Where did that come from?

Why am I repeating it?

Is it true?

I don't even know.

And this is a really big deal.

It's no small thing to actually be able to look at ourselves and ask these things.

You know,

One of my favorite metaphysical teachers is Gurchev.

He was a metaphysics teacher.

I don't know.

He was really just some dude that gathered a pile of people around him and shared incredible thoughts.

But back in the late 1800s,

Early 1900s in Russia,

And he used to talk about doing the work.

What is the work?

We always talk about that.

Well,

You got to do the work,

Right?

What is the work?

Well,

To him,

The work was learning about ourselves,

Looking at ourselves intellectually,

Mentally,

And watching our thoughts,

Knowing the nature of our thoughts.

And he said,

He says,

It's really hard work.

He says,

We don't like doing this work.

It's really hard.

If you're doing the work and it's easy,

You're not doing the work,

Right?

The work is hard.

So even being able to look inside of ourselves and actually say,

All right,

Where did this come from?

Where did the spell come from that I'm not good enough?

So the first one I want to talk about are the spells that are cast upon us by society.

I want to tell you a story.

I've always had really poor self-worth.

Like it's been something inside of me.

Well,

And I'm going to say my whole life,

But I don't think so.

I think it actually began when I was 14.

And anytime I would ever talk to someone who was like kind of a psychic or they'd always say,

What happened to you when you were 14?

And I'd say,

I don't know.

Nothing.

Like,

I mean,

Sure,

There's been abuse,

There's different,

But none of that happened when I was 14.

The only thing I remember that happened when I was 14 was up until that point,

I was really happy kind of being who I was.

I kind of was that kind of pure as snow kind of kid,

Liked to read,

Liked to hang out with my quiet introverted friends.

I was a girl guide,

You know,

Just sort of a normal kid.

And when I went to high school,

There was a TV show on called Square Pegs.

And Sarah Jessica Parker was really young then.

Like I mean,

She had to have been all of 17 or something like that.

And she was the main character and her and her friends were considered Square Pegs.

So this would have been like 1982,

1983.

And at this time,

Everything was about nerds.

Everything was about the nerds versus the popular people,

The ugly versus the pretty people,

The,

I don't know,

Common folk versus the wealthy,

Interesting folk.

Everything became this weird split in society.

And it's always been there,

Don't get me wrong.

But this was my poor,

You know,

13,

14 year old experience.

Anyway,

So I'm watching this show Square Pegs and Sarah Jessica Parker was playing the nerdy kid and her and her friend were in high school and all they wanted to do is fit in.

But they were the Square Pegs that couldn't fit into the round holes.

And of course the round holes were the popular kids,

The cool kids,

The pretty kids,

The,

You know,

The ones that would be successful kids.

So one day I go to school and I had these two friends and we were really good friends from when we were when we were children.

And I said to them,

Oh my god,

Have you guys seen this new this new TV show like Square Pegs?

Isn't that hilarious?

We're the Square Pegs.

But in my mind,

This was great.

Like I didn't see it was a negative.

I just saw it as isn't that awesome?

We're like them,

Right?

Because Sarah Jessica Parker and her friend,

They were great friends.

They still had fun.

But according to the world,

They were pretty dorky.

And I embraced my dorkiness.

I liked it.

My one friend looked at me and was like,

Are you kidding?

I'm not a nerd.

I'm not like that.

We're cool.

What?

And she was so mad at me.

She actually went on to bully me.

And I was really quiet.

Like I was awkward,

Shy,

Like really,

Really,

Really awkward and not really terribly sociable in the big world.

And I used to have to I used to hide in the library at lunch because if she saw me in the hallway,

She would yell at me and call me names.

And it was so awful.

Like it was so traumatic for me.

And that's how I kind of spent the next like year and a half was hiding so that no one saw me at lunchtime because I was so afraid of being shunned by her.

So the wild thing that happened at that time that happened alongside this weird,

Traumatic experience with my friend and suddenly being bullied and all these kind of things and you know,

In a great big high school with 2000 people and people are screaming at you down the hallway and stuff,

Right?

And you know,

All the movies I watched were all Revenge of the Nerds.

Everything was repeating this pattern.

No,

You're a nerd,

Katrina.

You're a loser.

No one's ever going to love you.

You're awkward.

You're brainy.

You're brainy and stupid.

You are unpopular.

And if you're unpopular,

It means you're going to be alone the rest of your life.

You are never going to be attractive to anyone.

Like this,

It's like the spells were just coming in from all sides,

Right?

They were just coming in from all sides.

Like no matter what,

I was going to learn my lesson that this was your truth.

Now get it in your head.

So you imagine as a girl in puberty,

How strong that message is,

How deeply embedded that spell becomes inside of us.

So how often are all of us having the spell put inside of us simply watching movies?

It's one of the things I love about,

What's that British show?

I never watched a lot of British shows,

But there was a great British show.

I can't think of it.

Anyway,

It wasn't like Hollywood.

All the people in it were just normal people.

And even when I say normal,

I don't mean ugly or weird.

I just mean people,

Like normal people.

No,

Not Downton Abbey.

It's an older one.

It was like on a street or something.

It's a show that I probably watched when I was like 20 years ago.

Like it's a Money Python.

Great.

Now I'm going to have Money Python in my head.

Coronation Street.

Yes,

That's it.

Thanks.

And there's probably a million more that I just never got to see because I live in Canada.

But you watch the show and it's a show about normal people.

Everyone's not filled with Botox and you know,

People aren't chosen because they look a certain way.

Right?

I remember even I used to teach belly dancing in a previous lifetime.

I used to teach belly dance and it was always really interesting because historically in like the Arab clubs in Toronto,

You would have a classical belly dancer that would be shapely and you know,

Maybe in her 40s or 50s and stuff and you would watch her dance and it would be so beautiful.

Right?

And then Hollywood got a hold of the belly dancing phenomenon and suddenly every single belly dancer had to be you know,

95 pounds,

Have long straight black hair,

Have big boobs like and that was the only thing that the eyes got trained that looked beautiful.

That was the only people we wanted to see belly dancing.

So suddenly,

Oh,

Only this percentage of people are beautiful enough to be seen belly dancing.

You know,

I get it all the time when people talk about going to naked beaches.

Next week I'm doing a talk about adventures of nature in naturism because people often would say,

Well,

I don't want to see all these naked people.

They should keep their clothes on.

Like there's a lot of judgment out there.

Right?

But what I always find when I go to these places,

But this is what everyone looks like.

This is what we all look like naked.

If every single person here got together and we went to a nature of speech,

That's what we all look like.

This spell that we all have under us that there's something wrong with what we look like.

Why is there something wrong with what we look like?

Why does this look better than this?

And why is this height better than this height?

Like where did that come from?

That's not true.

It's not even remotely true.

So the other thing,

The other place where these spells come from also comes from society,

Which is again why this is a toughie because it seems like everybody's speaking the same language.

Right?

Like even a lot of the things around these things that we say like,

Well,

I don't want to see all these people at a naked beach.

I don't want to see them naked.

It's the same thing.

They're not good enough.

They're not good enough for me to look at.

It's so curious.

After I wrote,

What if you could skip the cancer?

People will actually know it was after I had my healing in 1999,

Year 2000,

A lot of people would come to me for counseling.

Right?

They would come and you know,

Whether they were wanting,

They were sick and they wanted help or whatever,

But they started coming to me and I realized that my math degree was not really officially enough to help people in a counseling capacity.

So I went back to university to study psychology and there were a few things that happened there that caused me to only last a couple of years because I kind of realized that I wasn't studying what I even believed was true.

I kind of had my ladder against the wrong wall,

You know?

One of the things was when we learned about marketing and we learned about psychological experiments and they very effortlessly said without even a twinge of guilt said that 70% of all psychological experiments were done by marketing companies.

And when you think of that,

What that means is they are using our psychological makeup against us to make us buy things that we don't want or need.

Right?

You don't need to be convinced to buy bread or you don't need to be convinced to buy food for your family or shelter,

You know,

Or even let's say you want to take dance lessons,

You don't have to be convinced because you already want to take dance lessons,

That's why you're looking for them.

But if you have to be convinced to buy the new iPad,

To upgrade your car,

To get a bigger house,

To join the gym,

To do all these things,

Because maybe you don't really want to.

So then what do you do?

Well,

Let's get at people's fears.

What's our biggest fears?

Our fears of being alone,

Our fears of being shunned,

Our fears of not being good enough.

And that's what the marketing has done.

They actually do the marketing to figure out how to make you believe what they believe by tacking into those places where they can put spells on you.

It's really creepy,

Right?

It was so creepy that I actually eventually went,

Whoa,

I don't want to be here.

I don't want to be part of this whole schmozzle.

And there's a movie that came out,

I don't know,

I think in the 80s or the 70s called They Live.

You'd probably have to buy it off of YouTube if you wanted to see it,

But it's really creepy in a good way,

Because basically it was the same idea that there was a spell or a signal being sent around the earth.

And if you put on these special glasses,

You could see the truth,

But if you took the glasses off you were under the spell.

And one of the interesting things about this movie in terms of our talk today is on the billboards,

If you didn't have the glasses on,

You'd look up and you'd just see a beautiful woman lying on the beach and it would say,

Come to Cuba.

Wink,

Wink,

Nudge,

Nudge,

Right?

But if you put the glasses on,

It looked up and it said,

Spend money,

You'll find someone,

Procreate.

Everything was about obey,

Procreate,

You'll be alone,

All these subliminal messaging that's coming out of all the advertising.

And again,

It's kind of a dark topic to talk about,

But the only reason we're talking about it is to be able to sit and observe the effects of the things around us.

Like I remember when I lived downtown Toronto,

I live in a little town now of 8,

000 people,

So it's quite different.

My big inputs are trees and my friends,

So it's a much calmer place to be.

And I love this city.

I live in the city again in a heartbeat,

But what I was really conscious of when I lived in the city was the advertising and the marketing and the billboards everywhere.

And it was almost like,

You know,

In the masculine,

Feminine dynamic,

Right?

If I'm sort of in the world,

Everything coming in at me,

I have to receive it in some way,

Right?

And they kind of know that.

So it's very interesting just to be aware.

That's why this is really important to understand.

What is that advertising really trying to say?

It's trying to say that if I stay in my current condition,

I will not be loved,

Therefore join my gym,

Get this Botox,

Do this thing,

Blah,

Blah,

Blah,

Whatever.

There's lots of great reasons to join a gym and do whatever we want to do.

It's not a judgment of that.

But just really to be aware of what's going on around us.

And it doesn't mean avoiding it or being afraid of it or anything like that.

But just to be aware that this is in our minds,

This is where the spells come from that say,

I'm not good enough.

And at the end of the day,

When something goes wrong,

You think,

Well,

I'm not good enough.

It's not true.

It has come from the outside.

Another big place it comes from is our upbringing.

And it can come in from our upbringing in a lot of ways.

So first of all,

To really understand that our parents have been raised in the same society we're in.

All the same programming,

Fears,

Everything,

Our parents also lived with.

So they carried them.

And perhaps they carried them a little bit less consciously than we are.

There was no such thing as insight timer in our parents' day.

There was no such thing as even this whole idea.

I mean,

There was such a thing.

But it was these people like Krishnamurti and their followers.

This wasn't on TV or on the internet.

If you wanted to hear Krishnamurti speak,

You had to go to the university,

To the ashram where he was speaking to hear him.

So it was a very small percentage of the world thinking like this.

The number of people who sat around Gurchev's table and actually heard these ideas of actually looking at our thoughts and going,

Isn't that interesting?

So in our parents' generation,

They had much,

There was,

Even when I was first sick in 1999,

I would probably go back to when my mom got sick or my mom had cancer and passed.

And she would have got sick in 1989.

And I remember at that time really seeking alternative ideas about cancer.

And I've told this story many times that I had heard of a man who was studying the effects of laughter on illness and the effects of the mind on the body.

But there was no self-help section in the bookstores.

There was no internet.

You couldn't just find this information.

So I was at university the first time at this time.

And I actually went to the psychology building and banged on the doors of the professors saying,

Have you ever heard of some guy who laughed himself out of pain?

Until I finally found Norman Cousins,

Who wrote The Anatomy of an Illness.

And that was actually the real beginning of my journey of connecting mind,

Spirit,

Health,

All these things.

But I had to really work hard to find it.

So if you imagine our parents' generation and the generations before that,

These ideas just weren't out there.

So now your parents have you.

So what do they think of themselves?

They think they're not good enough.

Maybe they even had a higher influence of the church.

And a lot of the churches,

Part of it is making sure you know you're not good enough,

That you are sinful by nature,

That there are two sides of you,

One half that is good and one half that is bad,

And you have to live in a constant state of strife,

Battling between the good side and the bad side inside of you.

There's even teachings that if you've even thought something,

You've already sinned.

Well,

When you actually look at all the different thought ideas in the world that have come out,

And not even just in the last century,

But even before that,

Because of course we have access to these teachings now.

When you actually look at these ideas,

We start to understand that our mind is much more like a cosmic receiver than a generator of thoughts.

So all of a sudden you could walk by someone,

They could have the thought,

And you might think it's yours.

And now you think you're sinful,

And now the good side of you beats up the bad side of you,

And you're just in this constant turmoil.

And when someone else says to you,

No,

You're a really awesome person,

You're like,

Oh no,

You have no idea,

The dark side,

You have no idea how awful I am inside.

Do you know the thoughts I have?

You know the things,

Like you wouldn't believe it,

I maybe don't say them out loud,

But you wouldn't believe the thoughts that are inside of me.

This is deep training,

Deep guilt,

Deep,

Like,

You know,

I mean imagine even like I think about sex.

I have thoughts,

Right?

I used to always have these thoughts,

Like,

I mean this isn't kind of the same,

But it's just what's going through my mind,

So I have to tell you.

I used to have those thoughts,

You know,

When you're driving along the highway,

And you'd look and you'd go,

If I just drove off the highway,

That'd be,

Like,

It's these thoughts that just fly through my mind.

You know,

I obviously didn't drive off the highway,

But the thought went through my mind.

Maybe it wasn't even me.

Maybe it was something else.

I don't know what it was,

But I'm not going to sit and go,

Oh,

I think there's something wrong with me.

It's just a thought.

I didn't do it.

One time when I went back to school,

And I was studying psychology,

Right,

In the psychology thing,

So now I'm a mature student.

I'm the annoying mature student in the back of this,

Of Psych 101,

Right?

And I'm sitting there,

And they're talking about fear of heights,

And they're talking about how the fear of heights isn't actually a fear of heights.

It's a fear of jumping,

Because we will have these thoughts that make us go,

Like,

These impulsive thoughts,

Like,

What if I jumped?

And it actually isn't a fear of heights.

It's the fear of that unconscious following of a random thought,

Right?

Because if you're,

Like,

Tied down and you think,

Oh,

Well,

It's because I'm safe,

It's like,

No,

Because you can't jump.

So I'm listening to this thinking,

Whoa,

That's so crazy.

So here's me.

I put my hand up at the back of the class in this Psych 101 filled with,

Like,

19-year-olds who just won out,

Right?

But,

You know,

I'm really interested,

Because I actually went back to school.

And I put my hand up.

It's a class of 250 people.

And I said,

So is that kind of like when you're driving down the 401,

That's the big highway in Canada,

When you're driving down the 401 and you suddenly have an urge to drive off the bridge?

The whole class,

They just turn and look at me like.

.

.

Either they've never had the thought or they couldn't believe that I said it out loud because they're 19,

Right,

Or 20 or however old they were.

But anyway,

It's just the thought.

You know,

I don't have to do it and I don't even know where it came from.

But anyway,

We have a lot of training in our world,

Especially from religion,

From basically from anyone who wants to control you.

All right,

The best way to control a person is to have them in battle within themselves.

Tell them that the problem is actually within them and they have to solve it.

Well,

You can make them do anything you want because anything you say that's negative about them,

They will take in,

They will store and they will now repeat that spell over and over again.

You don't ever have to say it again.

You can say it one time.

One someone in your life,

A teacher,

A parent,

A grandparent,

A neighbor,

A friend,

A partner could say one thing to you once and the only power it has over you is how many times you repeat it.

One person could have said one thing once and if it hits any,

Any landing place inside of us,

We will repeat it and we will turn it into a spell.

We will turn it into our reality.

It is such,

I used to watch my mom do it.

My mom was like the nicest person and she used to teach in these inner city schools in Toronto and I've told you guys lots of stories about that.

She always had a ukulele club.

Those are like my favorite times at Christmas because she would teach all these kids,

She always have maybe about 10 kids in her ukulele club and these kids would come in after school and they would learn the ukulele and she would teach them all these songs from her childhood,

Go tell it on the mountain and all these songs and every Christmas at the Christmas concert she would get up there and my mom had bright red hair,

Fun,

Big smile,

She was just a light and she would get up there and all these kids and they'd get up there with their ukuleles and they're staring at my mom like okay,

You ready?

They would start to strum and play and they would all sing like go tell it on the mountain at the top of their lungs and they would just sing all these old songs from the 30s and 40s in like downtown Toronto.

It was just epic.

It was epic.

I guess as a young person I just would watch this thinking I don't think there's anything better than this.

Like this is so amazing and full of joy,

Right?

And people would come up to her and they would just say oh Isabel that was so fantastic.

You could just see the light in those kids eyes.

They were so excited.

It was so fantastic.

One person,

One person would come up to her and say aren't you getting sick of doing this?

God,

It's the same thing every year.

And we would go home and that is all my mom and dad would talk about that night.

Mom trying to unpack why this guy would say this.

Maybe he's right.

Maybe kids don't want to play the ukulele anymore.

Maybe she's not up to date enough.

Maybe she would torture herself about this one jealous mean spirited person.

My dad would be so exasperated like did you hear the other hundred people who were genuinely thrilled?

I know but you know what?

I don't know.

Like it's weird how these spells just hook us,

Right?

Because my mom had it.

She's not good enough and that guy pushed the button.

So now like just going back to the parents thing.

So you imagine that your parents were raised in this society where guilt,

Shame,

Sin,

All these things were just pushed on them constantly and then we were born.

Very very easy to also learn that we too are not good enough.

You can always be better.

You can always improve.

You always want to increase your station in life.

You always want to make more money.

You always want to make sure things look okay.

Sometimes the you're not good enough is really blatant and cruel,

Right?

Sometimes parents actually tell us you're never going to amount to anything.

You're always going to be a loser or you're always going to be a loser just like me.

You know I had a friend who was raised in a culture where if you were born to this station you had to own this station and never rise above it.

His dad owned a restaurant and he was to work in the restaurant and there was something wrong with him actually if he tried to do anything else.

He always felt like he wasn't good enough.

Like he almost was taught no no this is your station in life.

You will never be any more than that.

His dad wasn't being mean.

That was just the culture that he was raised in.

So this you're not good enough.

It's not always evil sometimes it is but it's not always right?

And then sometimes it comes from simply wanting to keep up with the Joneses.

It's like well my child went to this university.

Well my child did this.

Well my child did that.

Like it's like you have to work hard.

You have to work hard.

You have to raise your status.

Raise your status because you're never good enough no matter what.

And how many people right?

You work in a job.

You love your job.

You're doing a great job.

So what's the only the next step?

Promotion.

Why?

Why is promotion the answer?

You know they call it the Peter principle I think where people keep getting promoted out of a job that they're brilliant at to a job that's maybe not exactly who they are.

It's kind of like you know when you take someone off the floor and make them a manager because they're so great at being on the floor but it's like but they were really great being on the floor.

But we have this idea.

No but you can always be better and management's better than being on the floor.

Oh executive manager's better than manager.

Oh CEO's better than.

No it's not.

It's just a different role.

But everything has been put into this hierarchical thing and this all feeds this you're not good enough because no matter what you get to you can always get higher.

You can always get higher.

I was talking to a friend the other night and she was really struggling because she's you know heading for divorce because of this or maybe not because of it but it's a part of it because her husband had they've been really happy when they were dating and everything and they got married and he got this really great job.

And the job paid a zillion dollars.

You know like there's I don't know in a lot of small towns there's always some industry some factory some place close that pays a million dollars right.

Not for really doing anything.

It's not necessarily that you are paid for something you went to school for or anything like that or even that you have specific skills like it's a power plant right.

So you just get paid a zillion dollars.

But after four years there he became a different person.

He became angry negative just bitchy all the time to the point that she didn't even want to live with him anymore and it created such huge issues with them and so she kept saying to him well why don't you leave why don't you get a different job and his words were yeah but where can I work and make this kind of money because we're not allowed to make less money because that means we're not as successful right.

We're going down a station in life even if it means losing his marriage losing whatever and so here's here's where I want to talk about this idea of enough the word enough.

I'm not good enough.

What does this mean?

If I had lots of food in my fridge and a friend came over and she says hey I've got some extra veggies and stuff you know and then I'm going to go shopping you know do you want some of these veggies that are in my fridge.

I'd look in my fridge and say no you know what I have enough.

You know what enough means.

I have all the veggies I need.

That's that's what enough means.

It means it's good.

I'm good.

My need is fulfilled by what I have enough.

I have enough friends.

I have enough air.

I have enough space.

Enough means good.

I am enough because even if I say that I am enough that even has some negative connotation.

Oh but you could be better right.

I mean there's there's always there's always room for improvement right.

No I am enough right now as I am right now I am enough and that is not negative.

Now think of money.

So these people easily could live somewhere else have a less lesser mortgage make less money and they would have enough.

But do you hear the words like it actually sounds negative like so you have enough.

But wouldn't it be nice to have extra like what about what if things go sideways.

Don't you want some put away for a rainy day.

And what if something happens.

What if what if what if what if right.

The use of negative imagination right.

What if this it's like no enough is enough.

And it's really interesting when we look at ourselves and we look in the mirror and we say because even if I was to say that I am enough it sounds like settling like I could have something better.

But this is enough.

Like it's really important to look at this word.

So this whole I am not good enough also really comes from self love self image all that kind of thing right.

When I was writing Tantric Intimacy and the whole first section is about love.

It's a redefining love so that we can actually connect.

And it came to the point where I was looking at you know I was looking at Gapé,

Filia,

Eras and it was always in relationship to other people.

And then I was really looking at self love.

How do we have a Gapé for self?

How do we have Filia for self?

How do we have Eras for self?

And I'm sitting downtown Toronto at the corner of Young and Wellesley for any of you Torontonians in a Starbucks.

And I'm facing out the window at the shelf there and I'm working away and I stop writing and I'm thinking about this.

Because self love is a huge deal and it's certainly been a big deal in my life.

And as I'm doing this,

This man I can see the crowd on the street on Yonge Street kind of jostling.

And I look and there's this man in a wheelchair and he's either a paraplegic or almost quadriplegic but he can kind of just move a bit of one arm and that one arm is sort of just moving the joystick on his wheelchair and he's navigating the sidewalk right and he's coming up to the corner and the lights changing and he's kind of like banging down over the edge of the sidewalk and getting across and the people are kind of.

And I'm watching him and I watched him and watched him and watched him and I thought wow we really are all given different assignments here.

You know that man was given this assignment to live as a paraplegic downtown Toronto.

What if he believed he wasn't enough?

What if he believed there was something wrong with him?

What if he believed that he couldn't have a full life because his legs didn't work?

He would miss out on his entire life and yet this was his assignment for some reason.

You know in the huge story arc of a soul this is what he was given.

He is enough.

That paraplegic in the wheelchair he is enough.

He is a soul as big and bright as all of us.

Right?

He has great things to share and great experiences to have.

Every one of us is the same.

Whether we have one leg,

Two legs,

Big legs,

Small legs,

Whether we're six foot four or four foot seven,

It doesn't matter.

This is our assignment.

This is perfect.

The best thing we can do is literally look at our assignment,

Look at our interesting incarnation and say,

Alright,

This is going to be fun,

Whatever it is.

This whole idea of being enough,

We are 100% enough.

We're more than enough.

Exactly as we are.

You know when we think,

Oh yeah,

But once I lose some weight then I'll be what?

Worthy?

Worthy of someone's eyes up until that point?

It's oh,

Like are you kidding?

That's nonsense.

We're like walking miracles.

Every single one of us.

We are incredible.

It is a spell.

Every time we repeat anything to ourselves,

Anytime we look in the mirror and go,

Oh,

You want to hear a weird story?

So one time,

One time at band camp,

No,

One time,

I think I told you guys a story about a guy I once dated in my travels.

I met him on Tinder and he,

I think he was a bit of a sociopath to be honest,

But anyway,

He would do these little things to kind of make sure I knew I wasn't quite good enough.

I remember one time I knew they were really subtle,

Like really subtle.

Like I'd be sitting on the bed answering emails or something,

Right?

And he'd be lying on the bed beside me and I'm like answering emails and he'd say,

Wow,

You type really fast.

I'd say,

Yeah,

I guess.

And he'd say,

Not as fast as my friend though.

Every time he'd say it,

I'd kind of get this giggle inside of me like,

Okay,

I don't know what you're playing at,

But okay.

Anyway,

And he'd do this all the time.

Like just say these little,

Little digs all the time,

Right?

But I didn't care.

So it was really obvious.

Anyway,

One day,

So I have this,

I don't even know if I still have it,

But I had this skin tag on my leg and it hurt.

I don't know whether there was something in it,

Like a piece of calcification of something,

But it hurt if someone touched it.

So every time he touched it,

I'd say,

Oh,

Careful,

Careful,

That hurts,

Right?

Anyway,

He'd say,

I have a friend who he's a laser surgeon or something.

He could get rid of that for you.

And I'd be like,

Yeah,

Okay,

Whatever,

Right?

It hurts,

Right?

Anyway,

One day,

We're sitting there.

He goes,

Okay,

Today,

Let's go into the city and I'll see if my friend can get rid of that.

And then he looks at me,

He goes,

And we could get rid of that on your face and this and that and this,

Oh,

And maybe that.

He started pointing out everything on my body that his laser surgeon friend could fix.

I just looked at him and I was like,

What?

But this obsession with thinking that there's something wrong because I have like,

I are age spots or I have funny things on my nose or I have skin tags or whatever that it's like somehow some,

I don't know,

Hit to my ego or something,

Right?

And you're like,

Wow,

I mean,

I'd never,

I swear he came into my life so that I could actually experience that,

That whatever he was,

I could experience it.

But anyway,

It's a very interesting thing because there is not a single person here that isn't amazing,

Right?

I mean,

When you think of it,

If you were to sit,

Let's do a little experiment here and then I'll put my glasses on and I'll answer any questions you may have.

But like right now,

How many people,

So there's 328 people here.

So let's imagine all of us sit down in a room and we close our eyes and we breathe deeply into ourselves and we feel into our hearts.

We feel into the energy flowing through our bodies.

But mostly let's focus on our hearts.

And now I want you to imagine what the heart of every person sitting in this room feels like.

All 328 of us,

It's all the same.

We are all the same.

We are all alive.

We are amazing,

Creative,

Infinite incarnations here on this planet.

Everybody shape and size and path and challenge.

That's all external.

That's just our journey.

But inside,

We are all the same and we are infinite inside.

You talk about enough.

It's a very interesting thing.

You know,

And then all of a sudden,

If we choose to do something,

If we choose to take up yoga,

If we choose to take up meditation,

If we choose to do something interesting,

We just do it because we want to play.

We want to see what is possible.

That's all.

Not because we weren't good enough before.

We're epic.

Every one of us,

Including our wonderful friend in the wheelchair,

Downtown Toronto,

Who I'm so grateful.

You just consider what an amazing gift he was to me in that day.

What an effect he had on the world.

What an effect he had on me.

What an effect he had on my book.

What an effect he had on anyone who reads that book.

We just have no idea.

He had no idea.

He went home that day thinking that maybe he hadn't had any effect on anyone that day.

And he made it into some random woman in Starbucks book.

He's epic.

He's a very interesting person.

If you have any questions,

Just please rewrite them.

Isn't seeing others as better or worse than us part of the issue?

Totally.

That's why the foundation of love is agape.

Agape is when we truly see each other understanding that we are all just souls on a journey.

There's no such thing as better or worse.

We're all just kids in the sandbox.

We're all just trying this out.

We don't know.

I'm even amazed,

Like I was telling you,

I'm up-leveling my yoga teacher training.

And I look back at all these things that I taught or I read or looking over the Bhagavad Gita and the Pantanjali Sutras and all of these old teachings and I read them today.

And they're so different.

I've not gotten better.

I'm going to say this out loud,

Ready?

I was awesome then too.

Isn't it hilarious that you're not allowed to say that?

You're not allowed to say that you were awesome.

I remember even like in my darkest times on the farm,

Right?

Like I used to be,

I married a farmer and I was 23 when I got married and he was 24 and we really tried.

And we had some really difficult times,

Both of us struggling with depression and just all kinds of things like that.

And we were also epic then.

We were trying our best.

Would I make different choices today if I?

Yeah,

Of course,

Because it's a different time,

A different consciousness.

But I was also full and complete then too.

So here's what's really interesting.

Back to Krishnamurti.

So Krishnamurti's fascination with the idea that our thoughts create our life.

So here he is in dialogue with David Bohm.

David Bohm,

One of his great,

I mean,

David Bohm was an epic quantum physicist,

But one of his,

He was very grounded though,

Which is why I think I really like him because I'm not really a quantum physicist.

I'm not a quantum physicist at all,

But what he used to talk about was that life is constant motion.

That his whole thing,

He would talk about how this manifest,

He called the explicate order,

Which isn't important,

But this manifest self was always returning to the implicate order,

The quantum field,

God,

Consciousness,

Whatever you want to call that.

And then returning and that we were constantly renewing ourselves in the field.

And now you imagine this,

If you look at Krishnamurti saying that we create our reality,

Our thoughts create our reality.

And then you mix that with David Bohm's perception of us constantly in flux.

You look at indigenous cultures that we are made of spirit,

Spirit is made of flux,

Spirit is always in flux,

So therefore we are in constant renewal all the time.

So if we change our thoughts,

Every time we return to the quantum field,

We return,

We come back a little different.

But if we hold one thought and repeat it over and over and over again,

We repeat it out of the quantum field as well.

And we keep repeating,

We keep creating it in our life.

So all we have to do is look at this spell and say,

You have no hold on me.

It's not true.

I have this vision of Harry Potter and because I love Harry Potter.

If you ever came across something that you feared,

The number one thing you feared the worst,

The spell was ridiculous.

So I did just point your wand at them and go ridiculous.

Oh,

Maybe that's it.

Ridiculous.

And we look at it and we say,

That's ridiculous.

It isn't true.

I'm exactly who I'm supposed to be right here,

Right now.

It's perfect.

Do you really think we actually completely returned to the field with breath?

I wonder if we are able to hold a part stuck thoughts and not let go 100% in that meditation,

The meditation on here on insight timer.

I think it's called renewal,

A meditation for renewal in the infinite field or something like that.

And it was something that,

So it's always when I,

When I create a meditation,

I can tell you my secret about creating meditations.

But what happens is I normally have an idea,

Something comes into my mind and it begins to repeat itself like a dialogue or a monologue begins to just roll through my mind and,

And it won't go away.

So I realized,

Okay,

You have to record this,

Whatever it is.

So I sit with my,

My handy dandy little microphone and I close my eyes and I begin to record a meditation.

But what's really interesting is by the time I finished recording it and I go to start editing it,

I've never even heard it before,

Right?

So it's always interesting.

Like I like to do my own meditations because I don't think I made them up.

And when I recorded that meditation about renewal in the infinite field,

What came out was this idea of playing poker that imagine you're dealt five cards and I don't actually play poker.

I don't know it in theory,

So you may go,

That's not really how it works Katrina,

But you know,

This is my,

My version of it.

So you're dealt five hands,

Five,

Five fingers,

Five hands,

You're dealt five cards and you have the option to give three cards back and get three new cards or one card back and get one card back or you can give your whole hand in and get five new cards,

Right?

Before you get started.

I know that's in some version of poker and that's my sense of the renewal in the quantum field is how many cards are we willing to give back in every moment?

How many thoughts are we literally,

How many thoughts are we willing to release back where they came from?

How much renewal are we willing to allow?

Our soul doesn't change.

Our soul is here for an experience.

So we're not going to lose who we are in the exchange in the five card draw.

So what if we were so clear that we released it all with every breath?

What if we just let it all go and we truly lived in the moment?

Like we truly lived in my soul in this moment right now,

Whatever happened in the past,

All five cards please,

All five cards please.

What else is possible?

What other cards are possible?

It's a very interesting way to live,

An interesting way to have faith.

It's an interesting way to sit in this moment and go,

Huh,

What will happen?

How will I shift and change in the infinite field when I'm not repeating things in my mind?

I don't know,

Life becomes quite an adventure then,

Never quite knowing.

Well,

Thank you guys so much for being here.

Form themselves based on whoever's going to listen to them.

Please join our circle,

Tantra Love and Connection with Katrina Boss.

If you search for Katrina Boss in the circles,

You will find amazing people behind that door.

So thanks again.

I hope you have a lovely day or a lovely evening.

We'll see you guys later.

Reviews

Absolutely wonderful and fantastic concepts, thank you!

TRIGGER WARNING: for those of you who, like me, are highly sensitive persons in the lgbtq community, there is a reference to HP towards the end of this meditation which might derail you, as it did me. Just a heads up for those is recovery from the transphobia and violence against the transgender community perpetrated by J.K. Rowling.

This is the best! Bookmark it to get a grip on your thoughts.

I enjoyed this talk. It was very validating. Thank you!!

Fantastisc again, Katrina. So looking forward to be at your Q&A tomorrow

Many big laughs and wisdom - grateful to have found your talks etc 🙏😻

Another great session. I love Katrina’s wisdom & humour. You really make a difference in this world. Thank you 🙏💖🙏💖

Deep love and appreciation for Katrina! 🙏🙏🙏❤️❤️❤️

Lovely 🙏

Brilliant

An insightful talk in order to inspire our lives! Thank you so much, Katrina!🙏💜

All sound stuff. Thanks for sharing.

I really enjoyed this, and how eloquently these concepts were expressed. I have difficulty making the Live sessions due to scheduling issues, but I plan to continue watching fir the opportunity. So glad these are now starting to become available as recordings!

Thank you for sharing with us here. I see you and the light within you. Be well. 🤲🏻❤🤲🏻