Why Healing Yourself Is The Most Important Journey

My first spiritual Teacher used to tell me that we are only here to save ourselves. This was impossible for me to hear as a people-pleaser and someone who really wanted to help everyone else around me. However, as time has gone on, it's becoming apparent that he was exactly right.

How is this true? What does it even mean? What does it really mean to heal or save ourselves? How does it change the world around us? Why is this such a profound teaching?

Trigger Warning: This practice may include references to death, dying, and the departed.

Transcript

So today we're talking about why the healing journey of our self is the most important thing we can do.

Back in 1999,

I was sick.

I had breast lumps.

My mom had just died of breast cancer.

It ran in my family.

It was a really big deal.

I had small children and it was probably the the big crisis that changed my life,

That changed how I saw the world.

And I remember my teacher,

A man appeared in our lives shortly before that actually,

Because we were in the midst of shifting our dairy farm to being organic.

And he was actually mentoring us in that.

But he also happened to have some incredible healing skills.

And I remember when I met him,

I kind of thought he might have been about 500 years old.

He just had that kind of wisdom that kind of went beyond,

You know,

It's funny when I think of it,

Because that was over like 35 years ago.

And I think he was maybe in his 40s at the time.

He wasn't that old.

But he had the wisdom of someone ancient.

And at the time,

I was super people pleaser,

Everybody else comes first,

You know,

That person struggling,

So I got to help that person and that person,

I got to help that person,

I got to analyze my husband and figure out all the ways that he has to change and analyze his parents that lived in a trailer beside us on the farm.

And my whole life was sort of externally focused.

And then one day,

He said to me,

You do realize that you are only here to save yourself.

None of that other stuff matters.

This was impossible for me to hear.

I couldn't even understand what he was saying.

And it wasn't just because I was raised in a society that said,

You have to be selfless,

You are here to serve others,

You are here to help others.

I don't know why it was such a hard thing to hear.

It felt very selfish.

Like I was going to spend the rest of my life navel gazing,

Wondering about,

You know,

Who am I and,

And I think the other big piece is,

I had experienced a lot of people that I would have judged as being selfish,

People who required the world to spin around them.

And especially as a people pleaser,

You really do notice selfish people because you end up spinning around them.

I never wanted to be like that,

Because deep down,

I really resented those people,

Because they ended up kind of running my life.

Because I had no center.

Myself didn't even exist.

In that journey.

Jim sat me down one day and he said,

Katrina,

What's your pecking order?

Who do you take your orders from?

What,

Where,

What,

How do you organize what you have to do first kind of idea?

And of course,

So I wrote down on a piece of paper and I can't remember exactly what I wrote.

But it was essentially Wayne,

My husband,

My children,

My in-laws,

My dad,

My family,

The people at the church,

The people at the school,

The people at whatever.

And he looked at it and he said,

Wow,

That's a great list.

If you want to get breast cancer.

I didn't take that very well.

And I said,

Fine.

What do you think it should be?

And he said,

Well,

First of all,

You have to have God on top,

Then self,

Then spouse,

Then children,

And then the rest of the world.

And we can talk a lot about the pecking order,

But that's not really the topic of today.

But I argued,

You know,

And I said,

Yeah,

Well,

That's not my husband's pecking order.

And he doesn't put me above the farm or he doesn't put me at,

You know,

And he says,

Katrina,

The biggest problem is that you're not even on the list.

That you,

It's like you are just this,

This ghost with arms that are just is going around serving any of everyone else.

But what about Katrina?

And if you are not on the list,

God can't be on your list.

And again,

I know the word God is a real triggery thing.

So just replace it with higher wisdom,

General consciousness,

Whatever it is for you.

Universal wisdom.

But he said,

How are you ever to hear divine guidance if you're not even home?

And this became my journey of actually figuring out who I was,

Actually connecting inside with who I was.

Because my whole life,

I wanted to be right for everyone else.

I wanted to be the best daughter I could ever be.

When I went to school,

I wanted to get the A.

I wanted to have the best daughter I could ever be.

When I went to school,

I wanted to get the A.

I wanted to have other people's approval in the form of grades.

And you figure education,

We're in school from age four or five,

All the way like I went to university.

So I didn't graduate till I was 23.

That's a lot of years trying to get the A,

Trying to get someone else's approval.

And who I was,

It was irrelevant.

And then you get married,

And all you want to do is be the right person for this other person.

All you want to do is be the good daughter-in-law.

And then you might have babies.

And now you have to be the,

Like your attention is always external.

At least this was my life.

So if we back up a little,

What is reality?

Like,

Who are we really?

As far as all spiritual teachings teach,

Maybe not religious teachings,

But spiritual teachings,

We are pure energy.

Every one of us here is pure energy,

Is pure consciousness.

Each one of us incarnated here on earth with a very specific design.

We are all beautifully unique.

We each have different gifts.

We have different challenges.

We have different physical makeup.

We have different ways that we think,

Different ways that we perceive the world.

And somehow,

All those pieces fit together in perfection.

And they make up something amazing.

You know the Aristotle's quote,

That the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

And of course we think that,

Right?

Like if you even think of your own self,

Think of your own self,

That well you have your thoughts and you have your physical makeup and you have your gifts and you have your challenges and you have the things you've learned and you have your experiences in life and you have all these things and you think,

Oh well all those things make up who I am,

Right?

If you add them together in an equation,

Then they all equal Katrina.

That's who I am.

Good,

Bad,

Ugly,

All that good stuff.

So of course,

If we look at Aristotle's quote,

We think,

Well yeah of course,

If you put them all together,

That's way better,

Right?

I mean then it's all working and symbiosis and cool stuff.

Well the crazy thing is,

The actual quote is,

The whole is different than the sum of its parts.

And that is something completely different.

So if you take something,

If you take who you are and you never separate out all these little things and you allow them all to come together in wholeness,

All your shadow,

Everything you love about yourself,

Everything you are,

And they all come together,

We magically transform into something different.

Imagine.

Imagine living with nothing within us that would separate us into pieces.

Imagine that you don't have a good side and a bad side.

You just have you.

You just have you,

This magical being that cannot be separated.

David Bohm,

One of my favorite quantum physicists,

Richard Feynman's right up there too.

He used to say that we are individual,

Which means that we are undividable.

We are not meant to be divided into pieces.

Can you imagine living like that?

Imagine never having judgment of self.

And again,

Maybe we go out and we do something and we feel regret.

And we feel regret for what we did as a whole being.

Not our bad side that did it,

Just our whole being messed up one day.

So we genuinely look at it,

We repent,

We make amends,

And we move on.

But we don't sit and beat ourselves up about it.

You know,

We don't have one side going,

I can't believe you did that.

But the reality is,

We come in as this beautiful consciousness.

But then we live in this very strange shadow world that tells us that one half of me is evil,

And the other half of me is good.

Or we're told that we are not good enough.

We can't be good enough.

We can,

Even if you get the A,

Maybe you can get an A plus.

Or if you can get the A,

Maybe you should be doing more.

Doesn't matter how good you are,

You can always improve,

Right?

I mean,

You can't,

You can't be so conceited to think that you're perfect.

That's not okay.

Humility is the only way.

Which is also true.

Humility before an infinite universe is extremely healthy.

But humility doesn't mean we aren't perfect.

Humility just means everybody's perfect.

Everybody.

Even the people that we may judge to be extremely imperfect.

They're not.

That's our own issue.

That's our own weird lens that we're looking at them through.

Everybody's perfect.

But again,

It's not about everybody.

It doesn't matter what other people are doing.

We are the only thing that matters in the land of change.

I'm not saying that nobody else matters.

I'm saying that if we want to look at what can shift and change and grow in the world,

It's only us.

We are the only one that we have to look at.

Because the reality is we're all a little twisted.

We've all been living in this weird shadow world that has been telling us that we're sinful and rotten and not good enough and that we need to do something to make ourselves lovable or to make ourselves worthy.

And so what we do is we take those twists and we go out into the world and we interact with others.

In all of our juicy little twisted ways.

And I don't mean in our happy whole and unique and eccentric ways.

I mean we take our twists out into the world and we experience them over and over and over again with other people.

And then someone might say,

Well,

You know,

This is really,

Are you sure you're happy doing that?

Oh,

You think I'm the only one?

Look at all those people out there.

Look how twisted they are.

And we do this weird deflection that because everybody's twisted,

I don't have to work on me.

I don't have to figure me out.

Right?

So it's an interesting journey to actually to actually living in that perfection.

Like as much as I say,

We're all perfect.

The reality is there's a battle waging inside of us.

And if we don't understand our perfection,

Then we don't live it.

We actually do live as divided beings.

That there's this that's okay.

And there's this that's not okay.

And everything else.

And then what do we do?

We go out in the world and we project that reality because it's the only one we actually know onto other people.

Well,

I like that thing about that person,

But I don't like that about them.

And that's really good,

But they could really improve that because that's the only reality we have inside.

So the other thing I want to mention is this idea of becoming whole,

As Aristotle would say,

It's the same root for the word healing.

So no matter where we are on our journey,

Every time we heal something inside of us,

That divides us,

Something,

Judgment,

Anger,

Anger,

Whatever it is that's inside of us,

Every time we do that,

We become a little bit more whole,

A little bit more healed.

And all of a sudden,

It's almost like,

You know,

We connect these two pieces.

And all of a sudden,

Energy is now flowing through that circuit.

And everything changes.

And then all of a sudden,

We can connect some another circuit,

And everything starts to flow and everything changes.

The body,

Mind,

Spirit wants to live in wholeness.

That is its natural state.

So every time we remove one of the dams in the rivers inside of us,

The body starts to return a little bit more to wholeness.

But it's also really important to understand that this healing journey is not forever.

We do not spend our entire life healing.

That isn't why we came to earth.

Because we often think that,

Oh,

You have no idea,

Though,

How messed up I am.

Like,

You have no idea where I'm at in life.

And it's like,

Everything can be healed.

And again,

I'm not talking about if you,

You know,

Had an accident and you had an amputation or something.

I'm talking about wholeness as a being.

I'm talking about whole consciousness.

Whatever it is,

We can find a solution,

We can find a healing path for that.

And at some point,

We will be whole.

Then we will really live.

But the beautiful thing is,

Every single step,

Maybe if you imagine yourself at 10% of me is connected on the inside right now.

And then you're 11%,

12%.

And then every so often it jumps because all of these beautiful things are working together.

And then suddenly you're 25%.

And you just keep that ball rolling.

And every step makes life a little happier and a little more peaceful.

Let's talk about some specifics.

Let's talk about love.

Love is a massive passion for me.

Because I define love the way my teacher defined love.

As the way that human beings connect.

That love is connection.

That human beings connect through the heart.

And even though we may call a lot of things connection,

And we call a lot of things love,

I'm talking about anything that actually draws you closer together.

And the foundation of that is agape,

Which is an ancient Greek word that means God's love of man,

Or looking at someone through the eyes of God.

And that may sound very high and mighty.

But I remember one time my daughter,

She was 16.

And she was working as a cashier.

And she came home one day and I said,

Hi,

You know,

How was work?

And she said,

I don't know what it was in the world,

But people were really angry today.

And she said,

Especially the seniors.

You know,

And I don't know whether there was a full moon or eclipses,

Or what was going on.

This was 10 years ago.

And she said,

So I was standing there as at the cash,

And people just kept coming through and they were just so angry all the time.

And finally,

I just looked at them and I thought to myself,

Someone in the world loves this person.

I'm going to look at them through the eyes of that person.

And that's what she did.

She stood there and every person that came through that line,

She looked at them through the eyes of someone who loves them.

That's agape.

That's agape.

So we can imagine it in the world,

Although it's a little bit scarce.

But what we really need to do is imagine it inside of us.

If we actually imagine that there are two sides of us,

Imagine a masculine and feminine,

And imagine or just imagine two sides,

It doesn't matter whether it's masculine or feminine.

How do the two sides feel about each other?

Imagine there is your true self.

And what your true self,

What I mean by that is exactly who you are right now.

Exactly what your body looks and feels like.

Exactly what your mental state of being,

Your emotional state is.

Exactly what your social situation is.

Exactly you right now.

Exactly you right now.

That is one part.

Then you have your consciousness,

Your thoughts,

Your awareness,

Your brain.

How does your brain treat you?

Does your brain look at you through the eyes of someone who loves you?

Or does it criticize you?

Does it judge you?

Does it create an ever never-ending list of to-do things to improve you?

Don't get me wrong.

I love a good to-do list and I love a good plan to execute to feel stronger and happier and fitter and all that good stuff.

But there's a big difference when we do it in love.

And we do it to say,

You know what,

My knees have been really sore.

Let's do something to heal that.

That's a whole other thing than,

Why do you keep having ice cream before you go to bed at night?

You know what that does to your knees?

There's a way to do the same things but actually do it with a loving intent.

So this is the first place when we think of the journey of healing ourselves.

It begins with loving ourselves.

Actually looking at ourselves and saying,

We've been through a lot together,

Huh?

Yeah,

Maybe I've ended up a little bruised and beaten but boy we're still here.

How amazing is that?

And then we just grow from there.

This is really important and it's easy for me to say.

But we really have to look at all the reasons we aren't like that.

Whose voice is in my head that says I'm not amazing for everything I've survived?

It's kind of like,

You know,

Imagine you've just climbed Mount Everest.

You're exhausted.

You've got like scrapes and bruises.

You haven't slept well in a month.

I have no idea how long it takes to climb Mount Everest.

And you get to the bottom.

Do people look at you and say,

Wow,

You look like a bag of caca?

What's wrong with you?

Why are you so tired?

Look at your body.

It's all beaten up and you've got bags under your eyes.

You're horrible.

Is that what we do after we've climbed Mount Everest?

No.

Someone says,

Amazing.

Look at you.

You're amazing.

That's what they do.

And then they say,

Wow,

You're really going to enjoy a good sleep,

Huh?

You know,

The bruises,

They'll all heal.

But you climbed Mount Everest.

Amazing.

Imagine if we looked at ourselves like that.

Look at this amazing life you've lived.

Look at the difficulties you've overcome.

That's amazing.

But that's a journey to get to even come to that place where we can do that.

That we can actually celebrate who we are right now.

So this is why this healing journey is so important.

To be able to get to that point where we celebrate exactly where we are right now.

Not who I'll be when I lose 30 pounds.

Not who I'll be once I,

I don't know,

Pay off my debt.

Not that.

Right now.

That is a worthy journey.

And so then if we want to consider how we interact with other people.

If we genuinely have that inner voice.

Genuinely have the inner voice that celebrates us.

Who we are right now.

How do we interact with other people?

How do we interact with our partners?

How do we interact with our children and our parents and the people that are difficult?

It's easy to interact with people we love and are easy and they're just like us.

But how do we interact with the rest of the world?

If we are genuinely celebrating ourselves,

We will genuinely celebrate everyone.

That's pretty awesome for the world.

And this leads us into compassion.

Genuine compassion.

Genuine compassion for other people comes from honesty within ourselves.

When I can actually look at my own foibles,

My own struggles,

The things that I wish I was better at.

Things that I wish I could stick to.

The thing,

Whatever it is,

When I can actually look at those parts of myself and say,

Well,

That's not your gift,

Is it?

You're not particularly great at that.

Great at these other things,

But not so good at that.

I can have compassion for myself.

When I fall down or I don't do this one thing or,

You know,

For me personally,

As much as I teach,

As much as I do this out in public,

I can feel very uncomfortable.

Like I think in my deepest heart,

I'm quite shy.

And even though like I've run,

I've had my own businesses for a long time,

Which forces you into the limelight.

It forces you to do the dog and pony shows.

So what happens is if I get out with a group of people,

Even like we go line dancing every Friday night,

And then afterwards we go out to a bar and have snacks and it's really fun.

As soon as there's more than two people there,

Three people there,

I get a little loud.

And it's almost like another personality flies up.

And afterwards,

I kind of have to sit with myself and say,

Why did you do that?

Why did you get so loud?

Why did you?

And if I'm not careful,

I'll actually kind of shame myself for it.

Why do you always do that?

Why don't you just sit quietly?

What do you,

You know,

But if I understand my nature that I just get a little nervous and I just say things,

You know,

Whatever.

That's my self.

That's my coping mechanism.

And then I'll get back one on one with someone and I'll settle back into who I really am.

But then what if someone else gets really loud at a party?

What if someone else acts out and they kind of get a bit big for their What if someone else acts out and they kind of get a bit big for their britches and they get a little bit annoying?

There's a part of you that can genuinely have compassion for that.

Maybe they're nervous.

I also that if something's going on in my life that I'm really chewing on,

And I'm actually working with anger inside.

Anger I haven't dealt with.

Out in a group,

I can get pretty preachy.

It's almost like I work out my inner struggle socially.

And can you believe that?

And what the heck?

And blah,

Blah,

Blah.

And I can get really self-righteously passionate about things.

That's just part of my process.

I don't know why.

And I'm glad my friends think it's funny or they find it entertaining or something.

But maybe other people are like,

Wow,

That Katrina,

She's she's pretty opinionated,

Huh?

But then what if someone else does it?

You can have compassion for them.

It's an amazing thing when we really look within ourselves and we really accept the things we struggle with,

The things we have a hard time with.

We genuinely can have so much more compassion out in the world.

Even sometimes it's easy to look at people who,

Even our children,

Like for me,

This is my challenges.

My kids are 28 and 26.

It is so easy to have an opinion as to what I think they should be doing,

Could be doing,

What would make them happier.

Because I care about them.

I care about because I care about them more than anyone in the world.

So they're sort of still connected to me,

Almost umbilically.

But they are their own people.

They're full-grown adults.

And it is really something.

But of course,

What does it mirror for me?

I'm 54 years old.

Most days I'm not quite sure what I'm supposed to be doing.

It's always funny,

Like I'll do one-on-one counseling with people every so often.

And so what do you think I should do?

And I'm like,

I have no idea.

Most of us don't really know what we're doing.

Like the answer only can come from within.

But we have to realize that ourselves before we can extend that courtesy to other people.

So again,

This journey of self-honesty and compassion for self,

It just has so many amazing effects in the world.

If we're concerned about the world,

If we're concerned about others,

We have to find it genuinely inside of us first.

Then there's this funny question,

Right?

That who else is there to work on really?

When we imagine there's this infinite God energy,

Quantum field,

Whatever you understand it to be,

And this amazing field of wisdom and energy manifested in nine billion people on earth,

And we can't even expand out into the galaxy.

It's too much.

It's hard enough to figure it out here on earth.

So there are these nine billion unique beings,

Incarnations here on planet earth.

I have nothing to do with any of those beings.

Each one of those beings has a direct connection with God or consciousness.

I use the word God because it's what they're made of.

It's the essence of what they are.

How would I ever step into their world and believe I have any idea what essence is speaking through them?

Isn't that crazy,

The idea that we have any idea how essence is manifesting in another person?

It's quite an illusion,

Isn't it,

That we tell ourselves when the reality is when we sit here,

Every one of us sitting here,

Is this incarnation,

This infinite refraction of consciousness of God or whatever.

This is it.

This is my whole world.

This is my whole universe in the form of Katrina.

This is the whole universe in the form of Katrina.

What else is there to play with,

To fix,

To journey through,

To expand,

To grow,

To learn through?

This is the only reality.

And then this reality goes out and plays with other people's realities.

And it's so interesting because when we think about the process of self-actualization,

The process of beginning as this beautiful seed and actually growing into our biggest self,

Our whole being.

So I am historically a mathematician.

That's what I went to university for.

Mathematics is the most beautiful philosophy about how to map the universe.

How do we map the universe in its purest form using numbers?

That's what mathematics really is.

So the crazy idea of the number one and infinity.

If we think about the geometry of this,

Of one,

Just the number one.

One is wholeness.

One is oneness.

One is oneness.

Duality comes from splitting one into two.

Three comes from further splitting or splitting the one into three.

But when we come back to one,

One is everything.

One is wholeness.

One is infinity.

Everything is within the oneness.

One is infinitely divisible.

You can have one half,

One third,

One quarter,

One hundredth,

One millionth,

One kazillionth.

It is infinitely divisible.

One is infinity.

So that means you as a oneness is infinity.

Everything is inside of us.

When we self-actualize,

We simply become everything.

We become whole.

And within that wholeness,

We are everything.

When I first met Jim,

My teacher,

My spiritual teacher back in 1999,

He was the first person I ever met who was that oneness.

He lived that wholeness.

It was mesmerizing to be around.

You would sit with him,

And it wasn't because he was preaching or teaching or anything like that.

You just were with him.

And it wasn't like he had this high vibe.

Like we have this idea that it's a higher vibration,

It's a higher something.

It's not higher.

It's wholeness.

It's understanding our epic galactic reality.

And so you hang out with Jim,

And he's just joy.

He's just happy.

Or he's angry.

Or he's whatever.

But he's whole.

And when you're around someone who's whole,

It changes you.

It's very,

Very interesting.

There's almost a magic about a person who's whole.

And this comes back to this discussion of Aristotle.

That the whole is different than the sum of its parts.

It's different.

It's magic.

It's transcendent.

It's sparkly.

So human beings are social creatures.

As much as I'm talking about that the entire universe is inside of us,

We are social creatures.

Now let's imagine a world where all of these epic,

Whole,

Self-actualized,

Sparkly,

Magical beings wander around the earth together.

Can you imagine what life would be?

Can you imagine the juiciness of that?

That's when life is really interesting.

That's when we actually find out what it means to be human.

But in the meantime,

The great thing is every little step we take matters.

Every little step we take matters.

Every time we gently shift,

Every time we have an awareness,

It slightly shifts us and then slightly shifts everyone around us.

Because how we act with people is how people shift.

They don't shift by us telling them things.

They shift because just being around us they respond differently and they have a different experience.

Every tiny shift matters.

The world is very gracious.

We don't have to figure things out right away.

We just have to know that that's where we're going,

Just to enjoy the ride,

Just to enjoy the journey together.

You know?

If you have any questions,

I'd be happy to answer them.

Sometimes I feel like I touch that wholeness and then splinter apart.

Can you make suggestions how to retain that and not slip back into worries,

People-pleasing,

And the old things?

I think this is where a daily practice is so helpful.

They call it a spiritual sadhana.

Sadhana means daily practice that expands us.

So imagine this is where you decide,

You know,

I teach kundalini yoga.

So maybe you do a kundalini kriya every day for 40 days.

Good days,

Bad days.

Because of course,

As you said,

It's the bad days or the difficult days that we slip back into the old patterns.

So we say,

I am going to do a kriya every day.

Or maybe you say,

You know what?

Every day I am going to meditate for 10 minutes.

Every day.

Doesn't matter.

Every day I am going to walk two kilometers.

Every day.

And I'm going to have a calendar and I'm going to put a big X or a big heart and I'm going to go buy stickers.

I'm going to put a heart on every day that I do my whatever my sadhana is.

And this is what helps us stay in a new consciousness.

Sadhana means daily practice,

But it's a very specific kind of daily practice.

To also understand sadhana is Sanskrit.

And so it also may have 500 other meanings.

But within the tradition,

I understand and how I was taught sadhana is something you do every day that helps to expand you.

So it isn't necessarily something that's easy.

It's something that you have to do.

That's a little challenging.

It has to expand you,

Which is why like,

In the tradition of yoga I teach,

You often don't choose a kriya that's easy.

You choose a kriya that's challenging because it's challenging something in you that can expand.

So thank you so much for being here.

I hope you have a wonderful day.

Reviews

Practicing every day connecting with wholeness, grounding within me than connecting with the Dao (God, Source, the Universe). And everyday it is hard to do so. My mind takes me in zillion directions and thoughts and emotions. But slowly, with patience, with practice, through my daily meditation practice, I manage to get there. Oneness, the number one. I stay there, heal and then return to me, the beautiful “perfect”, “enough” human being, social being, with love (experienced between every breath I take) as my weapon, ready to meet the struggles that always come my way. Care over control. Healing is not something I need to get an A+ at. 😂 Thank you as always Katrina for sharing your wisdom with us.

Wonderful talk. Very enjoyable to listen to and thought provoking

Deeply deeply moving. I loved the analogy of the Mt. Everest. Moved me to tears. You such a precious gift in my life! Thank you very much.