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YOU ARE NOT THE THINGS · The Karen Kenney Show

• 0:01
  Karen Kenney: Hey, welcome to the Karen Kenney show. I'm wicked excited to be here with you guys, and just thank you so much for tuning in, loyal listeners, people who
• 0:10
  are new to the show. I super duper appreciate you being here and that we get to spend some time together. So I kept flip flopping back and forth. I'm like, what
• 0:18
  thing do I want to talk about? So now I actually just decided to kind of combine two ideas into one, and I'm hoping that something that I share today will, I don't
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  know that you'll, you'll find that it helps you to look at yourself or the world a little differently. Certainly, that you can feel the love coming from my hat to you a
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  hat, because all of these shows, that's really what the show is about is spreading a little more love in the world and and through storytelling and using spiritual
• 0:46
  principles to hopefully have you walk away with something practical that you can apply to your life like right away. So I'm just going to dive right into this suck up. I
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  don't know what I'm going to call this yet, but I think it might be something like you are not the things. You are not the things. And you could probably take that, if I just
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  let you run with that title, you would probably go in a couple of different directions, like, Oh, we're not the material things that we own, we're not our bank
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  account, we're not the titles that we have. We're not, you know, the things that we own were not x, y and z and yes, all of that is true. What I really want to specifically
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  dive into around this is that so often, right, in the work that I do, in the work that I do as a spiritual mentor, as a hypnotist, as a coach, as a yoga teacher,
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  etc, etc, etc, right, I am not Hashtag. Hashtag, not a therapist. I am not a therapist. However, I am in the field of doing a lot of kind of therapeutic things,
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  somatically, at the level of the body, mentally, emotionally, subconsciously, right, so and spiritually. So one of the things that I often see is and hear also, as
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  a writer and a storyteller, I love stories, so I often end up hearing a lot of people's stories, which I love, and if, if I'm there, as in the capacity as a mentor, as a coach,
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  whatever you know, part of my role is to kind of parcel out, to kind of extract what's kind of under those Stories, like what's under the under but one of the things
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  that I often see and one of the things that I often hear that happens in our lives and in the retelling of our stories and these events and things that have happened to us,
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  because that's really what stories and beliefs and identities, right come from. They come from the events and the experiences that are happened in our life,
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  the meaning that we've assigned to those things, the interpretation that we had, mostly, usually as younger children around those events, and then the beliefs that get
• 2:53
  extracted from that, and then they become these stories that we often tell about ourselves. And so often it's like, you know, when somebody's telling you a story, they'll
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  say, Well, this happened, and then this happened, and then this thing happened, and then that event happened, and then this thing happened. And one of the things I
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  often want to remind people, and also I always say everything that I'm saying is for my E is first, okay, so if we really kind of go big mind and we look at how all the
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  different spiritual thought systems tell us that there's only really one of us here, that we are in perfect oneness. There is perfect union. The quantum physicists say
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  that there's no place where I end and you begin. We're all made up of the same matter, etc, etc, so we appear as separate bodies to each other, but really we're all one. Well,
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  if that's true. Everything that I'm saying that appears to be me saying to you, I am also saying it to myself. It's always for my ears. Also, you know what I'm saying. So I
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  always think it's important that I make that clarification, that I'm not sitting up here like on some throne, like I got it all figured out. I'm just parceling out this
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  wisdom. No, it's for my ears too. Okay, so listen to this, all these things that happen to us, all these traumas, all these dramas, all these hurts, all these incidences, the
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  1000 in one ways that we are brutal to one another, the 1000 in one ways that we traumatize one another, that we let each other down, the disappointments all this
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  stuff, even though there are a lot of things and a lot of events that happen to us, we are not those things. I want to say this again, even though there are sometimes a lot
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  of things that happen to us. Look, I could name them all. I can't name them all, but just think about it, betrayal, rape, disease, death, murder, adoption, like all
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  these things that may leave a mark. You know, the things that happen to us in our lives, and they leave a mark? You know what I'm saying? If you imagine, right, like
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  somebody like giving you a wicked hard noogie, right, it's probably going to leave a mark, a little bruise, like whatever. Well, sometimes those are those physical
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  marks. Somebody hits you, right? We bang our we bang our knee on the table. It leaves a mark. But sometimes there are psychological things that happen, not just physical things
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  there are there are things that happen inside of us in response to the things that happen to us. And a lot of times, we will start to confuse those things that happen to
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  us as who we actually are. And one of the things that we often do is we mistake our identity. We mistake who we are and how we see ourselves and how we relate to the world
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  by what's happened to us. And while I am a huge fan of stories and telling our stories, because I often say that, you know, shame goes away. This is how shame dissipates.
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  This is how shame kind of loses its power. Is when our stories are told in safe places and we have compassionate witnesses and stuff like that. But a lot of times, if we
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  don't, what happens is we end up confusing the thing that happened to us, that awful thing. We confuse it with who we are. We confuse our identity with our biography and
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  with the things that have happened to us. And look at a lot of stuff has gone down for most people that I know in the world, even if you don't think you have capital T
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  trauma, right, there's probably 1000s of little T's, little T traumas that kind of happened and went on in the world. And a lot of times, those things that happen to us,
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  they do leave a mark. They do leave us with these ideas of ourselves that I do not think are complete. We get fractured. You know what I'm saying? So we see ourselves, you
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  will often hear people saying, I'm so broken, or we believe that we are eternally wounded. We don't think there's any way for us to remember ourselves after we've been
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  dismembered, right? And this is what I think, that the ego mind does, and what the world often feels like it's doing. It's like it hacks us up into little pieces, so we
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  feel dismembered. We cannot remember our wholeness and our holiness because we feel fractured. We're identifying with the awful thing that happened to us. We lose a sense
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  of our true identity as one of God's kids as a whole self, and we split off into, you know, these pots. And a lot of times, these pots are related to these awful events that
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  happen, and it can be really, really, really helpful to remember. And I've shared this, I think I've shared this quote before on another episode, but it bears repeating
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  because it's so beautiful. And it's from John O'Donoghue, the beautiful Irish poet. And he says this, he says, There's a place in you. There is a place in you where you
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  have never been wounded, where there is still a sureness in you, where there's a seamlessness in you, and where there is a confidence and tranquility in you, there is
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  a place in you that is untouched by all these quote, unquote, things and people and events that have inflicted themselves upon you. There is a what a war in my teacher
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  might call a Sanctum Sanctorum within you, which, to me, is like a holy place. It is like a holy temple within yourself that it goes untouched by the things of this world.
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  And then, of course, in miracles, they talk about it slightly like this line that I love that I'm going to share with you. It says, try to identify with the pot of your mind
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  where stillness and peace reign forever. Try to identify with the part of your mind where stillness and peace reign forever. And so often we don't identify with that part of
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  our mind where I would say we have constant communion with the divine, with source, with love, capital L, love, not human, fickle love, divine love. God, the Creator, your
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  highest self, higher power, the universe, whatever you want to call it. I believe that there is a part of us that has never forgotten. We have not been dismembered from
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  this. We will. Our job is to remember that, yes, this concept of like pulling those fractured parts of ourselves back together into the whole the remembering, but also to
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  cognitively right, to kind of mystically and
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  no. Mythically, maybe is the word I'm looking for, like the mystics right to remember that mysterious part of you that can never be put asunder. You know,
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  Paramahansa, Yogananda. And I mentioned this often on different episodes. It's a quote that has been on my fridge, and I've also have had it in books and stuff like that, of
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  course, but I literally have it on my fridge next to a picture of my mother that says, Whom God protects nothing can destroy. What happens to us might temporarily seem like it
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  has wounded us or fractured us or hurt us or broken us or quote, unquote, defeated us, right? But it's not true. It's not true. There is a place in you that is whole. You
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  are not the things that have happened to you. Now, it doesn't mean we don't have to process sometimes the things that have happened to us. We don't have to grieve
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  those things. Of course, we do. This is part of the healing process. We don't just skip over them. We don't pretend like bad shit has happened. We don't suck it up and stuff
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  it down anymore. We don't do that, right, especially when the people I work with, we don't do that in my spiritual mentoring group experience and community the nest, we
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  don't do that, right? We're not just going to pretend like everything's fine when it's not, but we're also not going to make the mistake, right, of forgetting who we are so
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  much of spiritual work, mindset, work, personal development work. It's not so much about doing shit. It's about undoing it's about unlearning all the illusionary things
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  that we've been taught about ourselves, like, Oh, we're screwed up, we're broken, we're this, we're that, we're we're so it's interesting, because a lot of times as
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  humans, we're not wicked comfortable. Let me reverse that. We seem to be wicked comfortable with identifying with the Broken Pots of ourselves, or the pots that we see
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  is weak or poor, and I don't mean like poorly, those poorly pots of ourselves that have somehow been damaged, right? We're really comfortable saying, Oh, I'm a hot
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  mess, I'm a mess, I'm broken, remember? But we're very hesitant to claim the truth of who we are. We're not as comfortable, and because, I'll just say it, on some level, we
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  get rewarded for those quote, unquote, damaged parts of ourselves, right? The ego mind kind of gets off on that, but it makes me think about something that A Course in
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  Miracles says, I think it's chapter 29 of the text. And there's a line, there is a line that I love that says a cloud does not put out the sun, a cloud does not put out
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  the sun. So who you are as one of God's kids, who you are in your I am happy, healthy, healed, whole and holy who you are in your wholeness, in that eternal sense of
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  your true capital, s self, who you really are, cannot be changed. So when we think about that sun, that golden life giving ball of light, that golden ball of light in the
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  sky, even when we just had the Eclipse, remember recently, even when the moon, like boop, totally blocked out the sun, I would say 99% most of us on the planet, we know
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  enough now. We've seen enough science. We've experienced it enough. We know that the sun is still there, even though it's being blocked by the moon temporarily. Just
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  because clouds go in front of the sun and temporarily block it, right? It doesn't mean the Sun has gone anywhere. And we can think about our own less than loving thoughts as
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  like these clouds that try to block God's love or try to block the truth of who we are, right? All of a sudden we'll have a a thought of guilt or a thought of shame or a
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  thought of blame, or a thought of, you know, I'm screwed up, or I'm never going to be able to, you know, kick this habit, or, like, whatever the thing is, right? Those
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  those dark clouds that pass in front of the the sun, that that true self of who we really are, and we will get so absorbed in the shadows that those thoughts are casting
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  the beliefs that those thoughts are casting, right? I mean, the the shadows that those beliefs are casting, that we stop looking for the sun. We get temporarily fooled, like
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  it's like a veil that drops between you. It's an illusion. And you start to believe in your separateness from the Divine. You start to believe your separateness from your
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  source. You start to believe your separateness. From your goodness and the fact that you are whole and holy and innocent and lovable, despite your humanity,
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  despite your humanness, despite your clumsiness, despite the things that we sometimes do when we don't show up at our best, because we've temporarily forgotten
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  who the we are. We get seized by our quote, unquote trauma. We get seized, right? We go into our trauma responses, and the part of our brain that does our good, clear thinking
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  gets hijacked. It gets shut down, you know what I mean? And so we're not always working from our best selves, but it's temporary. It's just like clouds just temporarily pass
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  in front of the sun. But it's not who you are those temporary moments of what I call insanity, right? It's like the sun is still there, shining behind that block, and just
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  because you can't see the sun in that moment, just because maybe in that moment, you can't see or remember your goodness, or that you're an extension of love itself, or
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  that you are the light of the world, sometimes we forget, but just because you can't see it and you can't in that moment, remember it, it doesn't mean that it's not
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  Still there your goodness in the fact that you are loved. We see this in our friends, don't we? Sometimes our friends will make mistakes or do something or whatever. They
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  just can't see themselves for how they really are, like people you love. And sometimes I often say, Man, I wish you could pluck my eyeballs out of my head, and plug
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  them into your head and look in the mirror so you can see what I see. You know that I see your beauty, I see your intelligence, I see your goodness. I see your capacity right
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  to come out the other side of these temporary clouds, the sun is still there. I want to tell them you have not like lost who you really are, these awful things and these
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  events might happen to us, these things that might feel like they are crippling us. They have knocked us on our ass, and sometimes we feel like we're not going to be able to get
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  back up. And that's why it is so helpful to have people in your life. Man, if you only even have one, one balcony person, one true friend that can reflect back to you the love
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  that you are, the light that you add, the brilliance that you are, what a gift that is. And if you can join something like the nest, my spiritual grouping community,
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  right? Karen kenney.com/nest, N, E, S T, go check it out, right? You get to be surrounded by a community of people that are reflecting back to you Your goodness and
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  Your light. They're also not going to let you right. I always say like you gotta own both your brilliance and your bullshit. This isn't about pretending as if we haven't
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  sometimes cast those shadows, those clouds in front of ourselves. We do do that. We do sometimes make choices and do things when we're not showing up as who we truly are.
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  And this is what atonement is for. This is what in 12 steps they say you make your amends, right? This is what forgiveness is for. This is what this work is for. We
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  already know as humans. We're going to blow it right, we're going to be clumsy, we're going to trespass, we're going to make mistakes. That comes with the territory. But
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  we also have a lot of spiritual tools. We have different kinds of ways right to come back from to grow with the things that happen. And if we just keep insisting on
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  identifying with the parts of ourselves that were maybe as younger humans, as little kids, as children, or in our teens or 20s, when when awful things can happen, if we
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  keep identifying with those parts of ourselves that we have labeled as broken. Of course, we're going to feel that way, but you are not the things that happen to you.
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  And what happens is, is we tend to over identify with the body. We tend to over identify with this kind of meat puppet thing and the things that happen to it. And so
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  much of spiritual work is about shifting our identification away from body identification that is temporal, that is temporary, right, that is going to die someday, when we learn
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  to shift our minds out of fear that experience of the ego and all the illusions and the separation and the clouds, and we learn how to shift our mind to spirit
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  identification, to that part of us that is eternal, to that sun that never goes out, to the love that we are. Something miraculous starts to happen. And I wrote this in a
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  note. It says. Uh,
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  you know, there is a seamlessness. There's an unbroken and unwounded space where we can remember the truth of ourselves as an extension of the Divine and is one of God's
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  kids. And it's from this place. It's from that identity, right? You're not the things that happen to you. I'm not saying they didn't leave a mark. I'm not saying they
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  don't need to be dealt with and processed and maybe move towards a journey of healing, but you're not that thing. And if we can from from this place of remembering the
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  truth of ourselves, right? That's where our real happiness, health, healing, wholeness and holiness lives. That's where we're living from a place of love instead of fear,
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  so as a love letter from my heart to yours, whatever has happened to you, and I am so sorry for the awful things that have happened to you and maybe have been
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  perpetrated against you at whatever age you were, if nobody has said it to you, I am so sorry that these things happen to you, and if you did not have a compassionate witness
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  who could hear your story, I am so sorry for that too, and I hope that you can find somewhere in your life or somebody in your life, and whether that's a therapist or a
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  coach or a mentor or a support group, or whatever, you join a spiritual community. However it is that you that you start to remember yourself, and you remember that a
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  cloud does not put out the sun these awful things that have happened, they do not distinguish your light. They do not distinguish who you really are. They cannot
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  take that away from you. No matter what somebody else has done to you or what maybe you have done to yourself, you cannot extinguish your light. A cloud does not put
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  out the sun. And more and more and more, as we continue to do this, work together, as we continue to walk, walk the path together. And maybe, right? Maybe you're not working
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  with me in a group capacity or one to one, but you're listening to these episodes. You're listening to this podcast. My hope is that my words will somehow land in the part
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  of your mind that has not forgotten, and it's like, we're not trying to, like, grab you and shake you awake violently. I always talk about it like in yoga, I'll sometimes
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  say, you know, when we're coming out of shavasana, that final relaxation, I'll say, gently, like, gently, slowly start to return to this more awakened state. And I say, but
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  don't, like, shock yourself out of it. It's gradual, gradually, but inevitably, as if you are waking up a small child, as if you are waking up like a deaf dog, right? We
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  don't want to just jump and scare them, right, or a sleeping puppy, gently, gently, we start to return. We start to remember who we really are, and I am sorry if awful
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  things have happened to you. Look, I get it. I know. I am no stranger, right? I am no stranger to the difficulties and the trauma and the torches and the brutality and the
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  violence and the awfulness of the things in the world and what humans do to one another, what they do to animals, the poor animals, who have no voice. And this is why we have
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  to, we have to use our voice, you guys. We have to speak up for the voiceless. We have to speak up for the people or the beings who do not have the power and the control. But
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  we also have to speak up for ourselves and those parts of ourselves that we keep labeling. Like, I believe that we all have some rocky in us, right? Like, I believe
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  that we all have the capacity to be a comeback kid, to make our way back from these awful things. And part of it is being willing to stop identifying with or stop
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  identifying ourselves as those awful things. It's like, look, an awful thing can happen for you, to you, and you can choose to have that be the story you tell about yourself.
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  Now I'm not talking about later on sharing your story, whether that's on stage or on a podcast or writing a book. I'm not saying that, but if we can stop identifying from
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  the wound, and saying, I'm this broken thing. Well, you might temporarily be in healing, right? It's like when you break your leg, once that leg heals, you don't go
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  around telling everybody you have a broken leg, right? It's like they might ask, maybe you have a limp, and they might ask, why are you limping? You say, Oh, a while ago, I
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  broke my leg. It didn't set right, whatever, but hopefully right as things start to heal, we're not where. It's not like I'm saying. It's not like I'm a storyteller. I will
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  always be telling the stories of the things that have happened in my life, but it's I'm not. Really identifying with them, as if I am still that, you know, like, quote,
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  unquote broken or whatever, my whole life has been a journey of trying to heal from the things that have happened, right? And it's what is allowed me to do the work that
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  I do in the world. So within those awful things in some ways. And I hope you hear this the way that I mean it. I have spun gold, that treasure lies a lot of times our
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  strengths, our strengths and our and our medicine and our magic in the miracles often lie not in the awful thing, but who we have become. Who we have become, what we learned
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  about ourselves. Yeah, you know what? Sometimes we learn some things about the world and other people too, about how they can be really brutal and awful, and we can
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  also discover some pretty amazing things about ourselves as well. And those are the things that I want you to identify with. You are not the things that happen to you.
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  Doesn't mean they don't leave a mock doesn't mean we don't get some stories out of it. Doesn't mean we don't maybe have some struggle or some time where we're having to,
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  you know, work our way through. It doesn't mean it might not have some scars and some limps and some mocks, but we are not those things. Who you are as a child of God, who
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  you are is an extension of the Divine itself. Who you are as love, who you are as part of the universe you are bigger than. You are bigger and greater than the things
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  that have happened to you. And this isn't to downplay it. I hope you hear me. This isn't to downplay those things. Okay? So I hope this has been helpful in some way. I would
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  love for you to remember this if you take away anything, when you start to feel down like always, remember the a cloud does not put out. The sun applies to so many things,
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  whether you start to feel anxious, right? Anxiety is like a fleeting feeling right, a fleeting thing that moves across. Maybe it might, it might just block your son
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  momentarily, but we don't get to have to say I am anxious. I am is a very powerful statement. So there's a big difference between saying I am anxious, like putting
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  that title and claiming that, versus sometimes I feel anxiety. One is just like a classic, a passing cloud that all of a sudden there's the sun again, another one
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  like packs the cloud in front of the sun, casting only shadows. Okay, I'm having a hot flash while I'm doing this. I'm like, whoop, whoop. I'm on fire right now. And I don't
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  mean it in the in the good way, either. Okay, so here's the thing, just because you can't see it doesn't mean it's not there. And I'm talking about your strength, your
• 28:08
  holiness, your wholeness, your capacity to heal. I'm sending you so much love right now. If you're somebody who is struggling with something, and aren't we all, in some
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  ways, aren't we? Isn't everybody? Is it? What's that saying? Everybody's fighting a battle that you cannot see. We don't always know what's going on. Okay, so I'm sending
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  so much love to you if you're interested in the NES, if you're interested in joining my spiritual mentoring group, experience and community, some of the most beautiful humans
• 28:38
  I'm telling you are in this group, men, women, lovely, lovely, lovely, humans. And I would love for you to be a part of it. You can find out more again. Karen kenney.com
• 28:48
  nest. If you just want to get on my email list and find out about the different shenanigans, what I have going on and when I might be doing events or whatever, just go
• 28:58
  to Karen kenney.com/that backslash, right. Sign up. I'd love to have you join our little email community as well. So thank you so much for tuning in. Thank you so much for
• 29:08
  listening and remember, okay, remember, try to identify with the pot of your mind where stillness and peace reign forever. And as John O'Donoghue says, There is a place in
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  you where you have never been wounded. There's a stillness in you, where there's a seamlessness in you, where there is confidence and tranquility in you. And that
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  is the sun. That is the sun. And we have these temporary moments of madness, where we have these thoughts like clouds that float across and we forget who we are. We have
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  these thoughts of guilt or shame or blame or whatever, humili humiliation, whatever the thing is, right? Horror and we over identify with the clouds. But don't forget who you
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  really are. You are that bright sun, right? God's love shines in you, on you, in you, through you.
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  So you have the light of the world, and I hope you never forget it okay wherever you go, may you be, may you leave yourself, the people, the place, the animals, the
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  environment, better than how you found it wherever you go. May you, in your presence and your love be a blessing. Bye. Bye.