It would seem that pretty little Barbie has been catapulted from being a mannequin sold in a Box to being a Box Office hit. And rightly so. Until this movie was made, Barbie represented all that we needed to move on from. This idea that who we are is entirely defined by our name, our status, our personality and our appearance. A mode of understanding ourselves that places us in a very limiting and mostly anxious state. When Barbie pointed out to Ken during his emotional meltdown that he was not his girlfriend, his house, his mink or even beach, it inspired me to share my own realisation that who we think we are is not even remotely close to who we really are and always have been.
Yes, I am Sarah Susak. I am a mother of Stella, a wife of Halan and an Aussie who works full time as a corporate lawyer. But when thinking of myself as this body and this personality I am also Sarah who has a fat jelly belly and no teeth. I am Sarah who has major health anxiety and is petrified that cancer will come back. Where do these assessments of who it is that I am come from? And how real are they? This is a version of me that is manufactured from years of social conditioning, from years of reliance on the ego for my sense of self and mountains of other peoples’ opinions about who I am or should be. It is a statement about who I am from a very limited and subjective set of perceptual realities.
Since learning Vedic Meditation, I have started to ask myself who is this “I” that has the conscious awareness to make all these judgments and observations about who I am? Who is it that is experiencing this body that I am in? It can feel quite discombobulating to ask ourselves who we really are and it can lead people down paths of major and fruitless efforts to try to find themselves. But what if all we needed to do was remember what our true nature is already and always has been? We arrive in this world as an innocent baby. Born whole, unlimited, unbounded and then from that very first day all of the projections, prejudices, conditions, belief systems and other peoples’ opinions start to put out the flames of our ability to remember the truth of how deserving, how big and how powerful we really are.
Deepak Chopra has been known to say that transcendence of our mind identified smaller selves through meditation is the only real antidote to anxiety. This is because when we meditate, we temporarily leave this limited, relative, conceptual and un-real version of ourselves behind and access that unlimited field of potential that is the source and origin of who we really are. In that absolute transcendent state, we are an infinitely large bundle of limitless potentiality. We can be anything we dream to be, we can be less critical of ourselves, less afraid of challenges and feel whole and unbreakable again. And as we leave our meditation, we can take that state out into the relative world and do better, feel better. Much better.
I have a tattoo on my left rib that reads “Gnothi Seuton” which translates to “Know Thyself”. When I got that tattoo, I had spent a lifetime understanding myself as all of my individual traits and characteristics, stories and narratives about who it is that I am. But knowing who you actually are is very different to knowing about yourself. Vedic Meditation was my own portal to the single biggest re-cognition (and actual experience) that life is actually the dancer and I am the dance. C’mon Barbie, let’s go party!
Beautifully said as always Sarah. I’m struggling with my true self at the moment, Vedic opened up a long forgotten gift and I’m holding back trying to understand what to do with this now. If I’m being completely honest I’m also a little scared to share, although I know in my heart it’s real my head keeps saying people will think I’ve gone a bit wacky as I’ve never told anyone before about this hidden part of me. I guess the answer will hopefully come with more meditation x
Ohhh that’s good xx