Hello there.
Feel the places where the earth supports your body.
Know that you are held as you feel your lungs expand and take a deep breath in as you release and let that breath go.
Welcome to a hit of hope.
Just a warning,
This one goes deep.
And so if that does not feel safe to you right now,
I wish you goodness and light and hope and invite you to consider listening to something else.
In a past meditation,
I talked about the harpy in your head,
That voice that tries to convince you that you aren't good enough,
Or the one that is there to remind you of the ways you have messed up.
I bet most of us have a harpy in our heads.
I know I do.
But it also became obvious to me recently that I have something else lurking in my head.
A kraken.
Now one part of me wants to laugh at the melodrama of this,
And it is funny to imagine a big sea monster swimming around in my brain.
And who doesn't love the word kraken?
And yet the kraken inside isn't funny.
It's the monster that usually stays in the deep.
But sometimes that huge and fearsome creature surfaces,
Bringing terror and dragging all of those things with teeth up from the depths.
Inhale.
Exhale.
The word kraken comes from the Scandinavian word kraka,
Which is an unhealthy animal or something twisted.
Sometimes when it gets bad,
And I mean bad,
It isn't a harpy we are dealing with,
But a kraken.
We are dealing with something big and terrifying,
An unhealthy and wounded animal with sharp teeth.
Something twisted that comes from our deepest deeps and darkest darks.
It might be helpful to think of your kraken as your oldest wound.
The one that hurts you the most.
The trigger that brings out all kinds of monsters and darknesses.
And this can take everything in you to vanquish.
I'm not going to go into particulars,
And I'm fine now.
But my kraken woke up this week and started to hunt me.
It was terrifying.
I had met this kraken before.
It surfaced with my divorce,
My cancer.
And I knew my kraken thrived in silence and shame.
My kraken loves it when I keep my mouth shut.
Inhale.
Exhale.
When it got bad,
When the kraken was threatening to drag me down,
I knew I couldn't fight it alone.
Or if I tried,
I knew it would be harder and take longer.
So I reached out.
I emailed one of my wisest friends.
I went back to my notebooks,
Where I've gathered all kinds of wisdom,
And I let those words bring the light of love and hope and possibility into my battle with the kraken.
So armored,
This kraken almost instantly disappeared.
I do not mean to imply that battling a kraken is easy.
It certainly wasn't in the past.
But now I know what feeds my kraken,
What causes it to surface.
And I know what works for me in order to defeat it.
Saying the krakens aren't there isn't probably going to work.
And yet,
Knowing they are there,
Knowing what feeds them,
And refusing to give that to them,
That can begin to turn the tide,
As can reaching out for all of those comrades who are on your side.
Inhale.
Exhale.
May you be strong.
May you reach out.
And may you always defeat your kraken.
Namaste.
