I know why you are afraid to be seen. It’s not about you, but it has everything to do with you…
6th grade: I sat on a bench inside the main doors of my middle school, sick to my stomach. Something I had eaten, or maybe it was period cramps – either way the nurse had called my mom at work and she was leaving her job as a dental hygienist, working to put herself through nursing school, single parenting myself and my two sisters, to come and get me from school and take me home to my bed.
Two girls, 7th graders (quite possibly the worst grade ever), their backs to me as they stood at the doorway – presumably waiting for a parent as well – snickered together. Their heads close, hissing in each others ears, laughing and every once in a while glancing at me. I felt small. Alone. I just wanted to get out of there.
Then I hear “Oh, my Gawd, look that little car – it’s so loud, And the tires! They’re GOLD!” More snickering. My chest sank. I think it literally caved in. I felt the flush rise from below my belly button and hit my face like the damned hot flashes that consume me now every couple hours – 39 years later.
Kind of like this one – with gold on the rims
I knew that car. It was my mom’s little VW Rabbit: Burgundy, with matte gold & burgundy on the rims. She was proud of that car. It was the first car, hell the first adult thing, she ever bought herself after she left my dad. And prior to that moment, I hadn’t thought much about it, it was a car, and it ran, and it was a little loud, but those rims were funky and I sort of liked how unusual they were, and it got us places.
But in an instant, I hated that car. And I hated my mom for picking that car and for picking me up at that moment. And I hated myself and I hated those girls. And as I stood up and walked past them through the doors and to the car, sweating with shame, tears firing up my eyes – I could hear them laughing so loud “Oh, my Gawd, it’s her car!”
Like whisps of malevolent smoke, their laughter tapped and taunted my hunched shoulders all the way to the car…
If it’s possible to be both reluctant and hurried at the same time, that’s how I dove in the car, slamming the hollow-sounding door and staring straight ahead because if I looked at my mom I might scream and if I looked out the window to my right…I’d have seen them. Seeing me. Seeing my vehicle. Judging.
Based on how I typically reacted to my mom during that time, I’m pretty sure I spit fire at her. She had no idea what was going on, why I was so distraught and bringing this large cloud of hate in the car with me. I was a pre-teen girl version of Pigpen, only instead of dust and flies around me, it was humiliation, and fear, and hate hanging around me like a fog.
I cried quietly to myself all the way home and I learned right there to judge my vehicle.
When did you learn to judge yours?
I talked with a friend today and she was sharing that part of the reason she hadn’t moved forward in her life and really going for her dreams was because she was afraid to be seen. I asked if she was willing to give up that story. And she had good reasons not to. After all, it was her parents who taught her not to like, or trust, or value her vehicle. “Don’t be too much. Too loud, too pretty, too smart, too curious, too dreamy, too BIG….”
Me? It was a couple of stupid girls who didn’t know any better.
Her? It was a couple of (powerful) ignorant, fearful people who…didn’t know any better.
They never know any better when you really go back and look at the scene where it all began.
(Neither did we on the receiving end, for that matter.)
I shared with her that I recently got at a deep visceral level why we don’t want to be seen.
Our design is our vehicle. It’s the amazing, gifted, intelligent, ALIVE, temple that we (our soul) are magnetically coupled with from the moment of birth – and even before. It has an intelligence and purpose and genius that is so flipping beyond what our small little mind & fearful little ego can comprehend.
It (our design) does US. Not the other way around.
But we are shamed into thinking we are responsible for all of it (thank you self-help industry for beating us into submission with a faulty definition of free-will), and we are shamed into thinking that our vehicles isn’t as good as another and we take it PERSONALLY when someone judges our vehicle – but the vehicle doesn’t care. It doesn’t give a shit because it came here to DO and BE exactly what it IS and WE, we are the ones who judge the hell out of it.
We do that.
Those girls? They didn’t know better. Their judgement came from silly, petty, homogenized thinking that can’t comprehend anything different, unusual, or that entertains creative thought.
Her parents? They didn’t know any better either – they were just products of their own conditioning and limited belief system – a system that get’s passed on psychically, verbally, genetically, & energetically. I call this psychoenergenetics.(Yes, I made up that word.)
We judge our vehicle – we compare it with other vehicles. We IDENTIFY with it and instead of recognizing we are in partnership with the vehicle – that we are stewards of the vehicle – instead of loving the one we have, we try to make it run like other vehicles. We fight against our design’s natural intelligence thinking somehow WE in our infinite egoic and mind-driven wisdom, know better but somehow that never really works, and we end up hating it even more.
We think it’s other people’s judgement that we fear, but really it’s our own.
If you show up fully and authentically and others don’t like it – it’s about THEM.
If you hold yourself back, the only one judging you…is YOU.
We judge our vehicle first and foremost, before anyone else can – because then maybe we can control how others see us, but it just means we’re running on fuel that drains us instead of taking us where we yearn to go – where our design wants and knows to go – that will bring fulfillment, and prosperity and all manner of goodness.
I’ve been privy over my 25+ years as a therapist and coach to the darkest, most heinous things that people can do to each other and to themselves, and one thing I know for sure after all this time:
NO ONE IS JUDGING YOU HARSHER THAN THEY JUDGE THEMSELVES.
No one.
NO ONE IS GIVING YOU AS HARD A TIME AS THEY GIVE THEMSELVES.
It may not look that way on the outside, but it’s a Universal law: As within, so without.
People who torment, criticize, hate, ridicule, belittle, and judge others do it to themselves first & foremost.
So forget the story that you’re afraid to be seen by others, because it’s just that – a story that your mind made up to come to terms with the fact that you are not, WE are not – not one of us, in control of any of it – especially what others think of us. You put the blame outside of yourself, but that’s not where it lies.
Being afraid to be seen is a lie you tell yourself because it’s a collective story. It’s a faulty story that we humans share as a collective, but it’s a myth. It’s a psychoenergenetic myth of epic proportions and we individuals bought into it. It keeps us small, homogenized, ignorant, bland and lacking creativity. But you can stop telling yourself that story.
You can start seeing the truth about who you really are, and what is YOU, and what is your design (your vehicle) and how you are here to work together to contribute something ONLY YOU & YOUR DESIGN CAN contribute. And you can sit back and enjoy the ride, looking through the windshield of your design, trusting that it knows where it’s going, when, and with whom.
If you stopped trying to force your vehicle to look or be or do what you think will bring success and instead surrendered to the divine intelligence within it, you’d spend more time watching in awe as your badass vehicle (that is completely unique and unlike any other vehicle on earth EVER) takes you places that you could never even dream of because that’s what it came to do, and you are along for the ride – gold rims and all.
Love,
Kris
Curious about your vehicle and how you are designed to make money doing what is most natural for you? Let’s talk.
