STOP BUILDING CAGES
Today on The Karen Kenney Show, I’m talking about why we want to “stop building cages” for ourselves and others (inspired by a favorite poem by Hafiz.)
We’ll also explore the importance of not limiting people because of our own insecurity, fear of change, or need to control.
Instead, we’ll discuss the power of “dropping keys” through encouragement, enthusiasm and empowerment!
Plus, I share some helpful questions to ask ourselves and some action steps to help us create an experience of more love and expansiveness, instead of fear and contraction.
KEY POINTS:
• My New Sweatshirt
• The Small Man
• Stop Building Cages
• Fear of Change
• Dropping Keys
• The Good, Beautiful, and Holy Challenge
• The Nest - Group Mentoring Program
Karen Kenney is a certified Spiritual Mentor, Writer, Integrative Change Worker, Coach and Hypnotist. She’s known for her dynamic storytelling, her sense of humor, her Boston accent, and her no-BS, down-to-earth approach to Spirituality and transformational work.
KK is a wicked curious human being, a life-long learner, and has been an entrepreneur for over 20 years! She’s also a yoga teacher of 24+ years, a Certified Gateless Writing Instructor, and an author, speaker, retreat leader, and the host of The Karen Kenney Show podcast.
She coaches both the conscious + unconscious mind using practical Neuroscience, Subconscious Reprogramming, Integrative Hypnosis/Change Work, and Spiritual Mentorship. These tools help clients to regulate their nervous systems, remove blocks, rewrite stories, rewire beliefs, and reimagine what’s possible in their lives and business!
Karen encourages people to deepen their connection to Self, Source and Spirit in down-to-earth and actionable ways and wants them to have their own lived experience with spirituality and to not just “take her word for it”.
She helps people to shift their minds from fear to Love - using compassion, storytelling and humor. Her work is effective, efficient, memorable, and fun!
KK’s been a student of A Course in Miracles for close to 30 years, has been vegan for over 20 years, and believes that a little kindness can make a big difference.
KK WEBSITE: www.karenkenney.com
Transcript
Hey you guys, welcome to the Karen Kenney show. I'm wicked excited for a couple of reasons. Number one, if you're not watching this episode, oh my god, I have on
Karen Kenney:like my favorite new sweatshirt. Okay, there's an artist named Batsy head. First of all, what a name Batsy head. I freaking love it. And this artist does all these drawings,
Karen Kenney:and they're drawings of different creatures, and one is this cat. So I'm going to describe to you what my sweatshirt says. I posted about this on social media before,
Karen Kenney:and so many people were like, oh my god, must have that sweatshirt. Okay, so first of all, let me describe it. It's like a baby pink. It's like a light pink color. And then
Karen Kenney:if you can remember back in the days, if you were, if you were like a Snoopy fan, or like Charlie Brown. Fan, you know, back in the day, a child Schultz, you know? Fan, how
Karen Kenney:Lucy used to set up her little therapy booth. You would always have Charlie Brown sitting in front of it. Okay, so this is kind of like a play on that. So basically it
Karen Kenney:says, I'm moving my mic this bats he had. The cat is sitting at this, this booth that he made, and he's just sitting there with his arms crossed and his eyes wide, and it
Karen Kenney:says, psychiatric help, five cents. But at the bottom, his little sign says, I help you. And he spells it, H, A, l, p, and then just the letter U. I probably shouldn't
Karen Kenney:avoid it because I can't. It just kills me. I help you for five cents. And I remember when I posted it online, somebody commented, I would like 25 cents worth of help. Please
Karen Kenney:look at, look at, I think most people need, like, at least a bucks worth of help. Oh, dear Jesus. And here we are okay and we're back. Welcome to the Karen Kenney show. So
Karen Kenney:today's episode, today's episode. Today's episode, I'm doing things a little differently. Like, like, sometimes I'll do a little hook at the beginning, like, tell
Karen Kenney:you, like, what the show is going to be about. Sometimes I'm just going to dive in and talk and whatever. Here's the thing, I gotta I just gotta be free, man. I gotta be
Karen Kenney:me, and I gotta just roll with how I'm feeling that day. And I love getting the show done, and I gotta keep it loose, and I gotta keep it kind of, you know, inspiring.
Karen Kenney:So today, first of all, okay, the other thing I was wicked excited about is that, speaking of I help you. One of the things I want to say is I'm doing in September,
Karen Kenney:starting September 1, 2024 so I know that if you're listening to this in October, November, December, I'm sorry it's already happened, but starting September 1, 2024 I'm
Karen Kenney:doing what's called the good, the beautiful and the holy challenge, and so many people have already signed up. It's going to be so much fun, and we'll get excited. And I don't
Karen Kenney:have an easy link to just drop and be like, hey, here it is. Go to Karen kenney.com/i don't have that, but what you can do is get on my email list, because I'll keep sending
Karen Kenney:it out, or just head over to my Facebook page, Karen Kenney and wicked easy to find, or just write to me at Karen, at Karen kenney.com shoot me an email telling me you
Karen Kenney:want the link to sign up. It's five bucks. You guys, it's five bucks. You're going to get two live zoom calls with me, an amazing, beautiful, downloadable PDF, like, 16 page
Karen Kenney:PDF. It's fantastic, and it's a private, dedicated Facebook group for the 30 days that it's happening. So for five bucks, it's like, so wicked cheap. So like, hop in. Let
Karen Kenney:me know if you want to, like, check it out. But why I'm laughing is because in that challenge, I help you, just like I do in the nest, right? So my group, spiritual
Karen Kenney:mentoring program, I help you. Okay, here's what today's show is about. I'm calling it stop building cages. Stop building cages. And the inspiration from this comes from an
Karen Kenney:old it's a wicked old poem by a Sufi mystic poet called Hafiz, H, A, f, i, z, and this poem is, I'm just going to read it to you slowly. It's short, but it has always
Karen Kenney:inspired me. It moves something deeply within me, and this is what it says. The small man builds cages for everyone he knows, while the sage who has to duck his
Karen Kenney:head. When the moon is low, keeps dropping keys all night long for the beautiful, Rowdy prisoners. Oh, all right, I'm going to say it one more time. The small man builds cages
Karen Kenney:for everyone he knows, while the sage, who has to duck his head when the moon is low, keeps dropping keys all night long for the beautiful, Rowdy prisoners, just let that
Karen Kenney:suck a land for a moment. There is so much spiritual metaphor in this in this piece, in this poem, you know, and it's so funny. I was a kid who I always liked. I do like
Karen Kenney:poetry, and I sometimes don't like I'm just being honest poetry that is so so so abstract that like my brain, it's like it slips through my hands. That's what I talk
Karen Kenney:about. It like I can't hold on to anything. So I often like poetry that I can like use in a way, I can do something with the impression it leaves. Now, look, we're not
Karen Kenney:supposed to always understand everything exactly verbatim. That's one of the powers of poetry. So not to upset the poets, it's not like you always have to spell it out for
Karen Kenney:us, but sometimes I just like things a little more simple, right? A little more just that I can wrap my head around it a tiny bit, you know? And so I was so
Karen Kenney:frustrated. I used to be so frustrated that I actually took a course. I took a class in college on poetry because I was really wanted to understand a little bit more what
Karen Kenney:I was reading and how poets thought and how they wrote and stuff like that. Okay, so this poem, when he says the small man builds cages for everyone he knows, I think to
Karen Kenney:myself, holy shit, man, don't we all? Don't we all build cages for for ourselves and for other people. We do this all the time. We have spent so much time in our lives
Karen Kenney:building cages for other people, and we do this with our thoughts. We do this with our words. We do this with our actions, and we'll talk about those in a moment. But I
Karen Kenney:think one of the reasons why we like to quote, unquote, metaphorically, build cages for people, is because we like to try to make people feel small, or to keep people
Karen Kenney:small. And I think one of the reasons, or some of the reasons why we do that, is because we fear change. We fear things being different. We fear other people growing,
Karen Kenney:because if they grow, they're going to outgrow us. What if we get left behind? We fear new things, right? The brain itself doesn't usually like a lot of change, right?
Karen Kenney:Like, sometimes it might like novelty, but it kind of likes the familiar. It likes sameness. It likes, you know, how many times have people you know made the complaint. Oh,
Karen Kenney:you've changed. Oh, you've changed, right? So a lot of times people don't like, and I can say this just coming from the northeast, right? A lot of places, especially in
Karen Kenney:Masshole communities, right? They don't want you getting too big for your britches, right? They don't want you thinking you're too special or you're too good, like you
Karen Kenney:think you're better than us now, right? Like all that bullshit. So a lot of times, you know, we like to try and keep people small, out of our own discomfort, out of our own
Karen Kenney:fear of being Can you hear Toby, right now, dude, I'm trying to record a podcast. Please stop it. I help you. I help you. In a minute. Okay, and we're back. So one of the
Karen Kenney:things is we don't really like for people to change. We don't really we fear change for ourselves. It's like, anytime, like, anything, like, it could be your gym, it
Karen Kenney:could be your yoga studio, it could be, you know, some place where you're like, Oh, the grocery store, right? When they when they move all the products, or target or
Karen Kenney:whatever, and they're rearranging the store, and everybody's like, Oh, I don't like this. I like it the way it used to be. I want to go back to how things used to be, right? We
Karen Kenney:like to keep things contained. And what's the word I'm looking for certain. And we want things in people to be that way. But no, that's not how this works. That's not
Karen Kenney:how this works here in human school and Earth school, in the big experiment in the illusion here that we are all participating in, right? So when we are trying to build
Karen Kenney:cages and keep people stuck and keep people small and keep people held back and keep people held down and afraid to give up our power, or afraid to give up our specialness,
Karen Kenney:or afraid to do that. It's a fucking racket, man, and it's not serving you, and it's not serving them. And the thing is, is that we build cages.
Karen Kenney:My. Mostly because we're being wicked, like me, focused like I don't like that. I'm afraid of that. I don't want things to change. My nervous system doesn't like that,
Karen Kenney:right? We're not thinking about the other person at all. And that person could be your sweetie, it could be your parents, it could be your siblings, it can be your partner,
Karen Kenney:right? Maybe your partner in life, or your partner at work. It could be your kids, it could be your co workers, it could be yourself. And that's another thing, right?
Karen Kenney:Is we'll say things like, Well, I'm not the kind of person who does that, or I would never, or I don't, or we have all these ways where we hold ourselves back from
Karen Kenney:experiencing new things, exciting things, had things, challenging things, right? And even like part of this challenge, you know, it's one of the things, one of the things
Karen Kenney:that I love about doing a challenge, or doing this challenge I was telling you about the good, beautiful and the holy, is that it's actually a fun challenge, right and
Karen Kenney:built right into the word challenge. I'm going to do a whole podcast about this. Oh, you know what? I'm not even going to say it. Thanks. I'm going to do a whole podcast
Karen Kenney:about it maybe next week. All right, hold on. I gotta. I cannot with with his screaming, hold on. And I'm back. Okay? So I vanished. I banished Toby to Siberia, just
Karen Kenney:outside the room. I helped him. I escorted him right out the door. Okay, so we do this thing too, right? We become wicked, self focused, and that's a lot of times, is we're
Karen Kenney:thinking about what we want. We're not really thinking about the other person. And we build cages by doing things like, I mean, there's 1000 ways that we do this and try to
Karen Kenney:keep other people small, but a lot of times is that, like, we'll we'll be sarcastic towards them. We diminish their ideas, we roll our eyes at them, we try to make them
Karen Kenney:doubt themselves, right? People talk about this a lot like, Oh, I was gaslighted, or I feel crazy. Like, is anybody else experiencing this? Like, I feel crazy. And
Karen Kenney:so there sometimes when we, we do these things where somebody will come to you with one of their dreams or their ideas, and you like, you, like, shit on it, right? Like you
Karen Kenney:poo, poo it, or you, you're like, you're gonna do that. And how are you gonna do that? So you jump right into like, you don't let them stay in imagination and possibility
Karen Kenney:and in the dream, right? You immediately go for and I know why people do it, right? You do it because you quote, unquote care about them and love them, and you want them to be,
Karen Kenney:quote, unquote realistic, right? You want them to, like, not get hurt or not get in trouble. So sometimes we build cages thinking that we're doing it out of love,
Karen Kenney:but cages are always coming from a place of fear. And the thing about cage, I just feel like, think about what a cage does. A cage tries to contain something. It tries to keep
Karen Kenney:it locked in. It keeps it from getting out. And this can be literally, physically. It can be self expression. It can be self worth. There are all different, 1000s of
Karen Kenney:ways, like I said, to put people in cages. And I can tell you from my own personal experience, I don't in like it. I do not like when people try to put me in a box,
Karen Kenney:when people try to put me in a cage, when people try to, you know, they they whether it's they hear my accent, and so they're making an assumption that I'm stupid, or,
Karen Kenney:you know, they look at you. I mean, think about it. People make assumptions about other people all the time based on first glance. They have no knowledge. They don't
Karen Kenney:know jack shit. But they're writing stories about other people all the time, trying to keep them smaller, keep them in their place. And we can see how it's happening in the
Karen Kenney:world right now, in politics and different stuff, where they're trying to keep some women in their place, they're trying to keep certain groups of people in their place,
Karen Kenney:that that is not not going to work and not going to happen, because people will, people will fight back. Nobody wants to put be put in cages. And I'll just leave that there.
Karen Kenney:I'm not even going to go go into that for now, because that wasn't the focus of this show, okay? So just know that a lot of times what we do is we want to feel bigger. So
Karen Kenney:when you find your ego wanting to feel bigger, so you try to tear other people down, right with your words, with your with the looks on your face, with with the little
Karen Kenney:things that you do, maybe the things you try to do, to sabotage them or to steal their idea, because you don't want them getting too big, because you're afraid. You're
Karen Kenney:afraid that if they're going to get big, you're going to look and feel small. And the thing is, is that the way that it works, in the most to me, in the best way, is that
Karen Kenney:we're all supporting one another, and we'll get to that in a moment. But one of the things I want to circle back to is when I say, we do this with our thoughts, words and
Karen Kenney:actions. Okay, so understanding how we build cages for people with our actions. I just described a few, right? Like you try to cock block their success. You try to diminish
Karen Kenney:them. You try to see. Sabotage them, right? And we do this in 1000 different ways, and it's not always malicious, and it's not always conscious, okay, sometimes we do it
Karen Kenney:because we got some stuff going on that we haven't dealt with, and we fear other people's bigness. Like, I know that I have a strong personality, right? I have been told
Karen Kenney:right to my face, like, oh my god, you totally trigger me right? Like I have had people come up to me and say to me that they they feel intimidated by me, or they that
Karen Kenney:that my confidence makes them feel insecure. I'm like, I'm not doing anything to anybody. I am just being myself, and if by me being myself, that somehow, like, I don't go out
Karen Kenney:of my way to try to make anybody so there are going to be instances where other people are just going to get triggered by you, but there are going to be times when we are
Karen Kenney:either consciously or unconsciously trying to put people in cages and boxes and limit limiting them, limiting their growth, limiting their bigness, because we feel
Karen Kenney:insecure that somehow we're going to be in their shadow, or we're not going to there's not going to be enough to go around, or we're not going to get what's ours, right?
Karen Kenney:And when you notice yourself doing that kind of like the kingdom of me, and it's all about me, and what about me? It's the me show, right? Then check yourself before you
Karen Kenney:wreck yourself, right? As the old song says, because it's not really an attractive look, but it also tells us that we're buying into the story of, I'm just this little body we
Karen Kenney:have over identified with body identification, rather than spirit identification. We are we are forgetting ourselves as spiritual beings, thinking that
Karen Kenney:we have to be like small and limited, right? Not enough to go around like all that stuff. It's like, I really highly encourage you to to notice when you are kind of doing, doing
Karen Kenney:that thing. And so that's how we can do it in actions. We can also do it with words, right? Like, we can cut people down. We can snicker, we can crack jokes. We can be
Karen Kenney:sarcastic. We can, you know, leave nasty comments on people, like somebody posts a picture of themselves that they're really proud of or happy or something they created,
Karen Kenney:or something they're wearing, or they're at the gym and they're showing their body, and all the trolls and all the small minded the like the smallest of the small people,
Karen Kenney:right, go in the comments to write mean shit. I'm like that to me. It just tells me everything I need to know about you. So it's like when, if you're catching yourself doing
Karen Kenney:those things, you bet you better have some pattern interrupts in your toolbox. You better stop yourself. You better check yourself. You better get right with yourself
Karen Kenney:and ask yourself, What's this all about? What's this meanness? What's this scarcity? What's this judgment? What's this attacking? Where is this coming from? What is it in me
Karen Kenney:that feels threatened by this, that I've gotta be upset because somebody looks different than me, or acts different than me, or love, quote, unquote, loves
Karen Kenney:different. All these things where we're like, trying to other people, right? The those other people are somehow bad, and we need to control them, and we need to limit
Karen Kenney:them, and we need to build some cages for them. You know what I mean? Okay, but how do we do this? Because I said we do this in thoughts, words and actions. How do we do
Karen Kenney:this in thoughts? Okay, so I'm going to try to say this very, very simply. So I believe in the collective consciousness. I believe that, right? Like so a lot of the the
Karen Kenney:spiritual traditions say that ultimately, we are all one. There's no place again where I stop and you begin. We are all an extension of the Divine. We are all part of the
Karen Kenney:oneness, right, perfect unity, all that stuff, all minds are joined, right? That the even the quantum physicists, all the scientists, they're getting how like minds
Karen Kenney:are joined. We affect each other. Our energies affect each other, etc, etc. So it's a very Course in Miracles kind of vibe. I'm going to tell you a quote that I love,
Karen Kenney:but it has a very Course in Miracles feeling to it. As soon as I heard it, I was like, Oh, that's so course in miraclesy, right? So in A Course in Miracles we say, you know,
Karen Kenney:perception, how we think, how we see in our mind, makes projection what we see out in the world, right? So what we're holding in our mind is going to be what we experience
Karen Kenney:out in the world. So John overdurf, who's a brilliant hypnotist and teacher. I heard this quote from my teacher, who has studied with John and his friends with John's
Karen Kenney:Melissa tias. So this is a John overdurf quote via Melissa tias, my friend and teacher, and he says this, I'm just going to say it slow twice. How you see someone in
Karen Kenney:your mind is the best they will ever be in your presence.
Karen Kenney:How you see someone in your mind is the best they will ever be in your presence. So if you're looking at somebody. And you're judging them and basing on basing them who
Karen Kenney:they are right now, on who they were before. You're never going to be able to see this person as they really are. You're actually seeing them as you are. You're actually
Karen Kenney:seeing them as how you view them in your head, not based on reality of the of the brother or sister or human or animal or whatever that is standing right in front of
Karen Kenney:you right now, if you can't allow for the possibility that people change, people grow, people return to their innocence, right when you think about so often. And there's 1000
Karen Kenney:examples, but I'll just use a couple. You know, people who have done some sort of a transformation, right? People who have gotten sober, people who have, you know, oh,
Karen Kenney:I used to work at this awful company, but now I'm working at this non profit or whatever. Right? We like to hold on to the old stories. We like to keep people in those
Karen Kenney:boxes of our own beliefs and stories about them, and we do this to ourselves too, by holding on to old identities that no longer serve us, that we have outgrown, right? Oh,
Karen Kenney:we don't. I don't do that anymore. That's not who I am anymore. And a lot of times, we don't allow people to become better in our mind. First, we don't choose to see them as
Karen Kenney:they really are, which is also one of God's kids, which is also as somebody who whose innocence has not been put out, like last week's episode, when I talked about, you
Karen Kenney:know, a cloud does not put out the sun, that bright sun is always shining, even though there might be clouds in front of it. So sometimes in our lives, we might do some
Karen Kenney:things and make some choices that are not truly reflective of who we are and what the what the sage does, right, what the sage does, what the wise man, woman, person does,
Karen Kenney:the elder, the one who has the knowledge, realizes, is that we do have the capacity to change. What's really changing is we're letting all that is not us fall away. And so
Karen Kenney:we return to our innocence, we return to love, we return back to who we really are. And a lot of times, we don't want to let people do that. We want to keep them in that
Karen Kenney:stupid cage, because that's how we feel more comfortable. And unfortunately, we do this to ourselves too. We don't allow ourselves to outgrow the small boxes in the small
Karen Kenney:cages that we have put ourselves in. We judge ourselves on our past. We keep looking back. We don't stand in the present moment. We don't stand in our sacred and holy ground
Karen Kenney:and claim the truth of ourselves. Okay, so that's number one. We build cages for ourselves and for others. Okay, how you see someone, remember, how you see yourself in
Karen Kenney:your mind is the best that you're ever going to be in your own presence as well. So how about we do some we do some renovation, right? How about we start dropping some
Karen Kenney:keys? So that's the first thing, right? The small man builds cages for everyone he knows. Now we're moving into while the sage. What does the sage do the sage who is so big
Karen Kenney:that when the moon is low in the sky, he has to duck his head so he doesn't bang his noggin on the moon like, what a visual that is, right? What is he doing? What is she
Karen Kenney:doing? What are they doing? They are dropping keys all night long for the beautiful, Rowdy prisoners. And how do we drop keys? So keys on the other hand, key
Karen Kenney:dropping, as I like to say, key dropping on the other hand is when I'll just throw is when we not only allow other people to shine, we set them up to shine. We set them
Karen Kenney:up to succeed. Rather than try to set them up to fail. We make other people look good. We build them up. We give them credit. We give them resources, right? We share what we
Karen Kenney:have. We look out for each other. We complement each other, right? We are in service to love and trying to celebrate our brothers and sisters. So I say, in other
Karen Kenney:words, I made myself a note so I wouldn't forget. In other words, key dropping is all about encouragement, enthusiasm and empowerment. It's about helping people right
Karen Kenney:to find their own inner peace. Is to find that freedom is to find that self love. So we're not trying to contain them. We're like, no, find your wings. Grow fly. Be
Karen Kenney:free. Go off to college. Go discover some things. Make some mistakes, learn that you can get back up, right? We set them up. We set them up for success. We set them up to
Karen Kenney:Hal like, help them right? I'm showing you my I'm showing you my wiggling. I'm wiggling my sweatshirt at you. We set it up so that we help them right, to to to as I do in my
Karen Kenney:work of right, your story to your glory. We help them to release those old stories, those old limiting stories, so that they can remember, so they can step into so that they
Karen Kenney:can claim the glory that they really are right, so that they can stand in their bigness and not feel diminished in their presence because of it, because we're like,
Karen Kenney:Hey, we're eagles. Come on to the field. Let's play together. Let's collaborate, right? Let's support each other. Let's shout each other out, right? So my best friend,
Karen Kenney:kt, you know, she found out I was doing this challenge, the good, the beautiful and the holy challenge totally surprised me, like blew me away. She wrote to me, and she said,
Karen Kenney:Hey, are you cool if I share this with my people? And I was like, like, your community, because she has a really big community, right? And if you don't know KT,
Karen Kenney:a little shout out to kT. If you are an educator or a teacher and you participate in TPT, teaches, pay teaches, KT has one of the most popular shops on that. Hers is, it's
Karen Kenney:kirsten's caboodle. Kirsten's caboodle with Ks, right letter Ks, she's got some fantastic resources. Anyways, so she totally surprised me, and she sent me the email, and
Karen Kenney:I was like, when I saw it, I was like, holy shit. I was like, This is amazing, and it was so good that I shared portions of it in my own email the next day. I was like, I
Karen Kenney:cannot believe that you wrote this thing. And that was right there. She was dropping a key from me. She was dropping a key for me. She's not, like, competing with me or trying
Karen Kenney:to be weird and be like, I don't want my friend to shine, because if she shines too bright, I'm not gonna No, no, no, no, we don't have that kind of friendship. And look
Karen Kenney:at when you can find those kind of relationships, especially between women. It is a powerful and magical thing, and it is a life changer. And I am so grateful. I'm so
Karen Kenney:grateful for her friendship. Okay, so I want to go back to this so, so little spiel on KT, and we're back so, so I want you to think about the times in your life when
Karen Kenney:somebody has really, like, dropped a key for you and, you know, maybe they helped you to move through the world differently. Maybe they introduced you to somebody, maybe they
Karen Kenney:gave you a leg up. Maybe they referred you to somebody, or that they made you the recommendation they referred somebody to you. Maybe they changed, like I said, the
Karen Kenney:way that you think, or maybe they changed the way that you live, like they gave you a set of tools or resources. Maybe it was a mentor, maybe it was like a spiritual
Karen Kenney:mentor, right? Maybe it was a coach, maybe it was a physical therapist. Maybe it was your trainer, maybe it was one of your parents, like, whatever, whoever, maybe it
Karen Kenney:was your boss that saw something in you before you could see it in you, and they were dropping keys at your feet, right? It's like they dropped a key right in front of
Karen Kenney:you, and they were like, Hey, I'm giving you this key because I see you and I believe in you, and I celebrate you, and I want you to feel empowered, and I want to encourage you,
Karen Kenney:and I want to inspire you, right? And so they they give you, they give you something that you need to help you to grow, to help you to change, to help you to have more of
Karen Kenney:that freedom. And here's the thing, with the key drop is right? They can't do the work for you. They can drop the key in front of you. They can set the key down right, like,
Karen Kenney:like Hafiz says, they're dropping keys all night long. So they're tossing the keys to the prisoners. But the prisoners have to first of all, number one, they gotta wanna
Karen Kenney:get out of their own cage, right? Like, just for example, I always say to people like, you can want your kid, your partner, your sweetie, whoever, to get sober, but they
Karen Kenney:can't do it for you. They've gotta wanna change how they're thinking, feeling, seeing themselves, acting, responding to the stimulus of things, right? We can't. We
Karen Kenney:can't. People can't do it for us. We've gotta want to get out of the cage. But when that key is dropped, right? You've gotta be the one that picks it up, puts the key in
Karen Kenney:the lock and opens the door. You've gotta want it. And the thing is, is that, you know, sometimes we want to open the cage, but we feel like we don't have any help. We
Karen Kenney:don't have any resources. And this is why, like, I do this podcast, really, this podcast is about spreading more love in the world and trying to spread more practical
Karen Kenney:and applicable spiritual principles that you can start using right away, right or try to help you to shift your mind a little bit to shift from fear to love to like, see
Karen Kenney:yourself or see the world a little bit differently, right? That's what, that's what the good, beautiful and holy challenge is all about, too. So this is the thing. You
Karen Kenney:know, sometimes we want to make a change, but we don't know how, and we need help. And then there are the people like, who have like, I sometimes think of my key chain,
Karen Kenney:right? Not my real one, but metaphorically in my mind, like I talk about, like, my spiritual toolbox, right? So I could also say That's like having, you know, those big,
Karen Kenney:jumbo janitor key rings you ever have, like your elementary school, Janita, who had that big ring of keys, and it was like, all the different keys. And you're like, Mr.
Karen Kenney:Johnson, remember which keys go in which doors, you know? And they just knew. They just knew they had all this wisdom. They're like that elder, right? That elder janitor,
Karen Kenney:right? I
Karen Kenney:think we should all have an elder janitor on our spiritual team who has all the different kind of keys, right? Oh, my God, I love that visual. I'm gonna snapshot that in my mind
Karen Kenney:for a second. I'm gonna pause for a second snapshot that in my mind. And I'm going to draw a picture of that for myself. Okay, because it's so much easier to unlock the
Karen Kenney:cage. If you got some keys, if you got a key, that's great. Stat was one, you got a bunch of keys, you can try. You got a skeleton key, it unlocks all the doors. And
Karen Kenney:I think love is the key that unlocks all the doors. I just stand by that. I just stand by that. So A Course in Miracles has a quote I read. I say this one all the time because
Karen Kenney:it's one of my favorites, right? It says this, my chains are loosened. This is like saying that the cage door, it right. The cage door, the key is right there. My chains
Karen Kenney:are loosened. I can drop them off merely by desiring to do so the prison door is open. I can leave simply by walking out. So when those keys are dropped at your feet and your
Karen Kenney:chains are loosened, you've got to first of all, recognize, oh, there's another way I could choose peace instead of this. I can choose differently. I could choose again,
Karen Kenney:right? I can choose as many times as I need to to get myself out of this pattern, this addiction, this habit, this way of being and thinking. You know, I can do it just simply
Karen Kenney:by desiring to do so, because sometimes, man, we've got to drop our own keys. We've got to help our self. We gotta educate ourselves. We gotta invest in ourselves. Go
Karen Kenney:to the library. There's free books there, right? I'm not even saying like, you have to drop like, 1000s of dollars on a coach one to one. I'm saying like, join the nest. 50
Karen Kenney:bucks a month, join a challenge, like the GBH challenge, right? Good, beautiful, holy. Five bucks listen to a podcast, right? Read, educate yourself, learn, ask for help, find
Karen Kenney:a mentor. All those things, right? We've gotta be proactive in dropping and picking up our own keys sometimes. So here's some action steps I want you to think about.
Karen Kenney:Here's some things I want you to ask yourself, and I want you to be willing to take an honest look. I mean, I want that for you, but you get to decide for yourself. So
Karen Kenney:here's here's a better way of saying that. Are you willing to take an honest look at this next question I'm about to ask you, so I want you to ask yourself this, what cages
Karen Kenney:have I built? Ask yourself, what cages have I built out of fear? What cages have I built out of jealousy, out of competition, out of sarcasm, out of being controlling, out of
Karen Kenney:putting people down, out of trying to not, you know, to take some take credit always, you know, trying to take credit for somebody else's work. Take credit for somebody else's
Karen Kenney:ideas, always speaking first at the meeting, not letting other people have the opportunity to raise their hand or have a voice or whatever, right? I'm not even going
Karen Kenney:to go into all the awful ways that humans keep animals in cages. One of the reasons why I'm not a fan of zoos at all. You know, one of my teachers, my meditation teacher,
Karen Kenney:eknathwaren, he once said, and I will never forget this. And I don't know who actually created it, but the visual that I always have is a tiger that has is out in the wild,
Karen Kenney:but he's in a cage, and the door has swung open, and literally, this tiger is leaping out of the cage, and he's moving so fast to get out of that damn cage that he's almost
Karen Kenney:like blurry in the picture. And what is teaching was about is he was talking about how that's why everybody loved the movie Free Willy, too, by the way, it says
Karen Kenney:something inside of us all cheers when a wild creature is set free, I get emotional just thinking about that something inside of us cheers when a wild creature is set free.
Karen Kenney:But here's the thing, we're all wild creatures. We are all the beautiful, Rowdy prisoners who want to be let out of the cages that we are often put in, whether it's
Karen Kenney:from our childhood and our trauma and our patterns and our history, our identities, right? The ones we've created for ourselves, the stories we tell ourselves, the ones that
Karen Kenney:other people try to put us in, the ways that we try to limit ourselves out of fear, right? So what cages have you built out of fear? Make a little list. Get your pen and
Karen Kenney:paper right. Who else have you put in cages? Is what I'm saying. How have you put yourself in the cages? What cages have you built for yourself and be honest? Because
Karen Kenney:cages the energetic, the energetics of a cage. For me, it's not just fear. I experienced it like contraction, this contraction, this, trying to control this,
Karen Kenney:trying to suppress this, trying to contain, right? That doesn't feel like, like arms wide open, that feels like really, really, really small. So make a list, maybe split it
Karen Kenney:into, what cages have you built for others? What cages have you built for yourself and. Are those cages built up? Are they built out of fear? Are they built out again, jealousy,
Karen Kenney:competition, greed, all the 1000s of ways. Be honest with yourself. But then we go on to after we do that exercise, we move on to number two. And then you ask yourself this
Karen Kenney:question, what keys have you dropped out of love? And if you're not quite sure, right, ask yourself, What have I done out of encouragement? What have I done out of
Karen Kenney:kindness? What What have I done out of compassion or collaboration, or shining a light on somebody else's talent, or building people up, or doing a shout out, right, or
Karen Kenney:creating more freedom for another human being by giving them a raise or again, you know, recommending their services to somebody. How have you supported other
Karen Kenney:people? How have you dropped keys of love for yourself? One of the ways that people drop keys of love, I can only go through my line of work right? Is, is they sign up to
Karen Kenney:work with me. One to One, they join the NES, they listen to the podcast. They sign up for, like, the random things I do here and there, right? Like the challenge, or they
Karen Kenney:come to a yoga class, or they come get assisted stretching, or whatever it is that they're doing, right? That's the ways that I help holding up my stretch it again. I help
Karen Kenney:you. I help you. This is how I help, right? So, how, how? How are you dropping keys for the beautiful, Rowdy prisoners, including yourself, and if you're not doing it.
Karen Kenney:Alternate question. C, right. So, a, what cages have you built out of Fiat? B, what keys could have you dropped out of love? Or could drop out of love? Let's plan future.
Karen Kenney:Think about how we can get better at this, and then what's stopping you if you're not doing it? Because what's stopping you is going to take you back to A, which is the
Karen Kenney:question, what am I really afraid of? Wouldn't she rather right? Don't, don't, don't we, don't we, so don't we want to drop more keys? Because that's really the course
Karen Kenney:of action. Stop building cages. Drop more keys. Stop building cages, drop more keys and how you do this. I can't give you the answers. That's why I want you to ask
Karen Kenney:yourself these questions, right? You know the answers inside of you. I don't know your whole life history and your traumas and your dramas and all the things that have
Karen Kenney:happened, right? I know some. I know some of you out there. I know some of them. But so this is going to be different for everybody. So I want you to ask yourself, like, what
Karen Kenney:does this look like for you? Like, what is this going to look like for you moving forward? But whatever you do, whatever you do, and I thought this was really funny. I
Karen Kenney:don't want to hear it from the haters. Like, I don't own any Taylor Swift music. I hear her, of course, out on, you know, out in the world. I know, obviously know who she is. I
Karen Kenney:know people who are obsessed with her, who totally love her. I watched a documentary once on her. I loved seeing that she writes her own lyrics. She writes her own music,
Karen Kenney:that she's really like, you know, I think, I think she's, she's a pretty, really interesting human being. But my point is, is that I just heard, I heard this song title,
Karen Kenney:and I thought it was hysterical, and then I was like, oh. And then I went, I just went and listened to the song for the very first time right before I recorded this podcast.
Karen Kenney:And she says, so I said, Whatever you do, this is me, whatever you do. Here's me helping. Whatever you do, don't be what Taylor Swift called the smallest man who
Karen Kenney:ever lived. I guess she has a song called the small the smallest man who ever lived. And when you listen to that song, you're like, oh yeah, this is so great. This person
Karen Kenney:was the smallest man who ever lived, in her eyes. So here's the thing, stop building cages. Be the sage that is having to duck your head down when the moon is low and keep
Karen Kenney:dropping keys for the rowdy prisoners. Keep dropping keys for the rowdy prisoners. So I hope this has been helpful in some way. I hope you can feel the love that I'm trying
Karen Kenney:to spread from my hat to yours. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you are a longtime listener, I appreciate you. If you're new here, welcome, welcome. I super duper
Karen Kenney:appreciate you. Like I said, you want to come join my monthly group mentoring program, my spiritual mentoring program, the nest. It's $50 a month. You come. You try
Karen Kenney:it. If it's not for you. Leave, right? Leave after a month, no hot feelings, whatever. If you want to join the challenge, you can just reach me. Go to my website. Go to my contact
Karen Kenney:page. It's Karen kenney.com/contact
Karen Kenney:join my list. Karen kenney.com/sign up, because I'll be talking about this a few more times, and sending the link directly to your email inbox. If you want to do that or
Karen Kenney:you can. Sign up for the nest, Karen kenney.com/nest that'll be fantastic. You can also shoot me an email, Karen at Karen kenney.com and just say I want the link and
Karen Kenney:I'll send it to you. Okay, so thank you so much for tuning in. I am off to drop some more keys myself, and I hope you have a fantastic rest of your night wherever it
Karen Kenney:takes you. So wherever you go, may you leave yourself and the animals and the other human beings and the environment, right, the trees and the bees and the rivers and the oceans
Karen Kenney:and the mountains, all of it nature, right? Please just leave mother nature and the environment and all the critters better than how you found them. Wherever you go, may you
Karen Kenney:and your presence and your energy and your love and your key dropping be a blessing. Bye. Bye.
