On the next episode of RIPPER, Teri-Denise explores the importance of recognizing one's inherent worth, asserting, 'I am not a burden,' as a powerful mantra for personal empowerment. Often societal pressures can lead individuals to feel burdensome, necessitating a conscious effort to reject these preconceived notions; however, with the essential practice of self-reflection, individuals can consider how they may inadvertently project their struggles onto those around them. Listeners are encouraged to confront what may feel burdensome and to actively seek methods of release to lead fulfilling existences.

Mentioned This Episode:

Queens of the Stone Age: Alive in the Catacombs

Hello there.

This is Teri-Denise, a Lansing Community College student and your host of RIPPER in LCC Connect Podcast, where I interview others and ask about their unique efforts and connections in around and beyond the community of Michigan's capital city.

Thank you for joining RIPPER. I am Teri-Denise and I hope you're having a great day or a great evening, great time in life.

I want to start out by saying I am not a burden, and you can repeat that as well. I'll say it again, I am not a burden. You may repeat that. I am not a burden.

It's something that came to my brain earlier today and I It's a great mantra, it's a great release, It's a great thing to know and to keep telling yourself that I am not a burden. Sometimes you're stepping into life, you're stepping into the day, and you feel the heaviness on your shoulders.

You feel an impact that you cannot get rid of. And it feels like it's encompassing all parts of your life. You can feel it in your head. It feels like there's an ache going on.

It feels like there's parts of your body that you're just shifting around with or shifting around at all. And it feels like it's just a struggle.

It feels like there's a lot of weight on your shoulders, a lot of weight on your body, a lot of weight in your brain, and it just feels like you can't get rid of it. And what that is are these struggles that one can just hold onto and not realize.

Until you talk to a dentist and hear back the question Are you grinding your teeth? Have you noticed a pattern of you grinding your teeth? Is your jaw hurting? When you're waking up, you might have a lot of tension and stress going on.

It is a typical question that some people get asked because you're holding a lot of burden and you don't realize it. So sometimes it's a good thing to take a step back and focus on something else entirely. I like to put on music.

I like to play music, I like to read, write.

I like to just go walk, go down to any area that has gorgeous beauty to look at, like flowers and little parts of construction or not construction, architecture. You know, you can find beauty in construction when there's not a bunch of dust flying at you.

You can find beauty in those little parts of watching things being made. There is a beauty in that.

Can you imagine, just for one moment, just a couple of thousand, few thousand, maybe 6,000 years ago, there's structures just Going up all over the place around the world that all have this kind of a. Shaped like pyramids.

They are pyramids here over in our area, especially in the mid eastern part of the United States, over in Ohio and just the lakeside areas and whatnot. Where you would find the pyramids over in the great river area or the basins and the valleys and whatnot, you would find pyramids.

You'd find areas where civilization, great civilizations would come together because the water's there. That's where functioning was. That's where grasslands, woodlands, forest areas.

There's where agriculture could be brought up and where domestication of animals and cultivation came from. It's because that's where the water is. People know this people. This is not some weird find that we figure out as we are 21st century beings.

We come from people that all knew that to survive you needed to be by something that made other things grow.

Essentially, because knowing that you're near other things that grow that can feed you, or that you could hunt and gather and whatnot, you knew that there's an essence of life to where these things grew.

I mean, the functioning of realizing that grasslands and seeds and whatnot, propagate, create other things that you can cultivate and grow and then have big old lands that you can, you know, plow and whatnot. And you're like, once you figure out, oh, this little thing, you put it in the ground and then it's like, well, what does it take?

It takes the sun, it takes the water, it takes milling, a little bit of untolling of the soil and whatnot. It takes patience. It takes a comfort in knowing that sometimes things come about in a different way than you expect.

Sometimes there's more, sometimes there's less, Sometimes there's just everything's right on the level. And at times, those are the times when you can harvest that. You figure out harvesting, you figure out the reaping and sowing.

That's one of those things that you can take within yourself. And knowing that all around the world we had. What are the mounds that we call here that were lakeside.

So we're in the area of the Great Lakes up here in Michigan, Lansing, Lansing area adjacent. And we are surrounded. We are literally the Great Lake State in Michigan.

And there are these things that had been kind of misidentified as being just large hills. And this was not very long ago that the areas were populated by people societies that were in existence before others came from across the pond.

Many, many years ago, millennia ago, thousands and thousands of years ago, this land Was already populated by great civilizations. In Canada, a great northern area, a lot have adopted the name of first nations and whatnot.

And it's just wherever you're at and whoever you're with, People just call ourselves different things. So some we call ourselves first nations, some it's the first peoples.

Some call it just indigenous of the area of what we know as North America now and then. Native American is another one.

But to know that these different creations of cultivations and economic processes, ecologic standards and centers of civilizations all had the same and similar kinds of structures that were being built world around at different points. There might have been more and more areas, more, less in some areas and whatnot.

But we know for a fact that those rivers, the lakes and where the water was heavy in flow, There are these things that were called mounds that were essentially pyramids. That's straight up what they were called. They were pyramids.

You can find them in Central America, as we know now, in South America, so Latin America, all pyramids, structures. All around the world. We've got these places. Got them over in Africa, got them over here on this side of the world.

And there are more that have been found in parts of Asia, over in the more eastern part of Asia and southern eastern part of Asia especially, you know, you have parts of China and whatnot or like Mongolia, you've got them everywhere.

So what I'm getting to is that there are these areas of life where you can go to where people have been going to for as long as we've been, you know, a part of our civilizations and whatnot, cultivating and people lay their burdens down. People go and they. Do you think people weren't doing just sitting in the sun and just going in the water all the time and swimming?

We've been doing the same thing since.

I mean, this is what we do essentially in the womb too, kind of you are like floating around in water or liquid, not necessarily water, a lot of different kinds of liquid going on in there. But yeah, we are water babies. We're mammals. We're creatures that can go in the water. And we find a peace in that cleansing ourselves.

Bathing is such a ritual for many people that we have our little structures that we go and we light candles. We have different scents and different kinds of oils that you can put into with your baths and stuff.

And it's an essential practice of cleansing ourselves because we know that that is a very, very, very unique way of letting things go or getting burdens off of us.

Even just the dirt, grime and Everything like that, that essentially becomes a harmful burden if it's inflicting and you know, being conflictive with day to day exercises and bacteria is not necessarily good to have a bunch of other people's bacteria and dirt on when it's creating your own ecosystem of sorts where it can cause sickness and harm and illness and whatnot to yourself and possibly to others. So that's a burden that we scrub off of ourselves at times and everything like that. These are, you know, go into our waters and everything like that.

It's a great time to get out of your own echo chamber and just have a great release.

So we are actually very blessed to be by some of the most like inhabited lands that served as a great device and structure throughout thousands and thousands of years. We are very, very fortunate to be at a plex of a sense of a center over here in this part of even our country. And I say please take advantage of it.

Do as much as you can, get those burdens off of you. Go swim, go just be on the beach side, get as close to the lakes as you can and take in what we're supposed to. I mean, we're coming from people.

Even if you're not necessarily culturally identified as people that were here from many, many years ago, you do come from people that were set up around water no matter where you were in the world. Everybody, everybody cultivated near these places that could release ourselves from many burdens. So say it again. I am not a burden. I am not a burden.

I had to come to that mantra, I guess within myself when I felt like I was being a great burden upon other people or even upon myself, and had to come to realize when I found my structural area of being able to release a lot of tension, a lot of just weight off of my shoulders and knowing that it wasn't me, had to come to that conclusion that there are things that I put upon myself. But a lot of it was coming because there was this idea that I was the one that was creating the burden.

When I took myself out of whatever place it might have been that I felt like I was being a burden upon.

If I was getting crazy looks from people or if people were talking to me in a way that I found very, very harmful or toxic and whatnot, I had to realize that it was wasn't me that was bringing on the toxicity, that it was other people's burdens that they were carrying around that were providing a way for toxicity to actually be the burden around us for whatever reason. If one becomes that and you Think that everywhere you're turning, because that's how it felt.

It felt like, and it very was happening where no matter where I was at, something was coming to where I would be laden, I guess, with a lot of people's burdens. And being a scapegoat is never fun. So what you gotta do is turn that around and say, I'm not a scapegoat for you. I'm not a burden.

You need to take your toxicity, and you need to figure out why you're bringing that to everybody else around you. Other people might be laughing along with you, but.

But most times people are just afraid to not laugh with what you're saying because they're afraid of becoming what your toxicity is throwing its way into. They're afraid themselves. But a lot of times the people that get scapegoated are the ones that are like, no. I defiantly say no to your toxicity.

And if you don't find that applicable in your life, then perhaps it's time for me to part ways with whatever this is. Because if there's others here that are too afraid to say anything and stand up for themselves, then perhaps this is not the place for me.

And you gotta be accepting of that. You just need to accept that perhaps that is not the way.

Because if you get yourself out of a pathway that's already on its line to destruction, that's full of toil and trouble, and wherever people just defiantly laugh at a person's struggles, then why would you want to add to your own burden by letting them call you out as a struggle, as a struggle bus? That's just saying, like, I accept that I'm a struggle. I accept that I'm a burden. And yes, please, ladle it on. Let me be your pit to throw things in.

No, absolutely not. I am not a burden. I am not your pit to put your burdens into as well. You want to go on a volcano and throw your stuff into that?

Please, we've got some active right now. In fact, go ahead, take the helicopter ride. Throw your burdens in there, hon. But I will not be the volcano for you to throw your stuff into.

I am not a burden. I am taking and reclaiming my space. Thank you, Maxine Walters. Thank you, Congresswoman. I reclaim my not being a burden, especially to myself.

First and foremost, I come in to my life and wake up coming into consciousness, needing to make sure that. That I am defeating anything that is trying to make and create my structure, my life, as being burdensome. It's already just rejecting it you just.

Sometimes the sun doesn't come in as vividly as it can be.

So sometimes if you feel like you're already rejecting whatever it is that's trying to get in front of you, you and the sun between you and waking up and to connecting with you and yourself and wherever you need to get to, to get to where you need to, to survive for the rest of the day or the rest of the week, or just for two seconds to yourself, there is an energy and there is that sense of resiliency.

Sometimes it's strong and sometimes you need to really, really buckle down and resonate with yourself so you can take on the projections that are full of burdens for the rest of the day. And the best way to do that is just to first of all reject the burdens. But then you need to clearly define what those burdens are.

So maybe you are like being a burden yourself to others. So then you've got to really reflect and, and say, am I being a burden to somebody else today?

You're like, no, no, no, we're not going to start the day off that way already.

You got to just already go like, I'm not going to be a burden to anybody else because I don't obviously want to be any, anybody to be a burden to me or me be a burden to myself as well. So first of all, reject the stance that you're going to inflict anybody with your burdens.

That's a great thing to already bring into your consciousness. If you're already having a difficult time waking up, you can go like, what is this? Why am I already feeling subjected?

Why am I already feeling weighted down? Is it the weighted blanket? No, no, that's already off.

Okay, no, you gotta just define then what are being the weights around you and you've got to take the weights off.

Like when we're in the weight room, like in our fine establishment, lLCC, going down to the weight room, you got to make sure that you're not straining yourself out with weights that you're already, you can push yourself, but you don't want to over strain yourself because you're going to hurt yourself. It's going to hurt. It's not going to be the good kind of hurt where it's like, well, that was a good workout.

But what I'm talking about is like literally going from 0 to 500 pounds or something like that. And you've never done that before. You're just used to doing, you know, your little 50 pound weights there. Why would you go to 500L.

You don't want to do that. You don't want to put that extra weight on. So define that. Like, no, I'm going to do £20 at a time.

You know, in a sense, metaphorically speaking, 20 pounds at a time. How about a couple of things that I'm thinking about right now that I don't want to bring in with me?

To work, to school, even into consciousness, even just defining those moments before you even reach. Is this a burden right now? Am I going to be a burden to anybody else? And already just like, choosing not to be.

Why would you want to choose to be a burden to anybody else? You're already projecting out a sense of overweighting anything within your life.

Because chances are, those burdens, if you purposely are bringing more and subjecting other people to your burdens and projecting that out, there is no way that that stuff is not going to come crashing down on you.

There is no way that you're not really going to subject yourself to sticking with the metaphor of the gym, that you're not going to bear some tough circumstance, that the bar is not going to fall on you or something like that.

You got to have your spotters, you know, if you're just throwing out things to other people, nobody's gonna want to spot a person that's just like throwing their weight around all over the place and dumping your dumbbells all over the place and everything like that, and just leaving it for somebody else to pick up behind you and everything like that. Nobody wants to spot a person like that. Nobody wants to even let you in the gym if you're acting like that.

So why would you act like that if you know the circumstances? Are you bringing your weight to other people if you're bringing all that weight and burden upon people, nobody's going to want to hang out with you.

Nobody wants to be around you. And if people are laughing along with you, it just means that they're afraid of you and nobody wants to be afraid of anybody.

Why would anybody, like, you know, nobody really wants to be that person? You lose yourself in that. You lose your definition within oneself, and then you just kind of float along with everybody else and it's not fun.

Project your personal things that are not weighted, that are not burdensome, and I guarantee you will have a different view upon life and people will have a different view of you. Talking about the big fibs again, or a little bit small fibs, those are burdens as well.

If you have to keep fibbing all the time, you're putting one wait on you're. You're encouraging a burden to bear. You don't want that bear. You don't want the maqua. You don't want that kind of maqua.

I'll just say you don't want that bear to come with its claws and salivating and to turn itself back upon you, because it will happen. You will not be able to control that maqua, that bear.

So just encouraging to lessen your strain upon yourself and upon others around you by just thinking about, what burdens am I already carrying? I know that there's rent that's due, or I know that I need to get out of the shelter sometime soon.

What can I do to keep my brain adjusted and focused to making sure that I can just not get swallowed by those burdens? What's any small step that I can take immediately? Can it be to just smile at myself today? Can it be just to smile at the sun today?

Can it be just to compliment a person about, hey, I like your shoes, Those are cool and that's it. Sometimes that's like one of those things that can lessen another person's burden.

Like it takes their brain off of something for two seconds and they're like, what these? Oh, these are things. And it's like, no, those are really cool. And they're like, okay.

Immediately their brain is like on a different thing all of a sudden. And you've just helped them defocus possibly off of something that was bringing great, great and encouraging, great strain upon their life.

So take that with you.

I hope that you can say to yourself, I am not a burden and I will not be a burden to anybody else because there's only a few ways of relieving yourself of many burdens in this lifetime. And it is definitely getting through it.

But with not adding more to your bar, I guess you could say you don't want to keep encouraging and influencing more burdens upon yourself or upon anybody else.

And if you can stick with it, believe me, it will encourage other people to lessen their burdens and to create a better adjustment with their own defining of oneself.

And you will help people without even trying to maintain that status of like, I'm the helper today, I'm doing this for everybody else, blah, blah, blah. No, it just becomes a part of your life. Working with your civilization next to those mounds, next to the pyramids and everything like that.

Cultivating, being and encouraging others just like being a great driving force without even thinking about it is one of those ways to stand without burden. I will leave you with that.

I will leave you with a mantra of I am not a burden and hope you can access those parts of yourself that will definitely help you to not be such a strain and a burden upon your own life and help encourage others. So I leave you with that. My name is Teri-Denise, this is RIPPER and I hope you have a wonderful, less burdensome day.

Also check out Queens of the Stone Age Alive at the Catacombs out of Paris. Thank you. Thanks for tuning in to RIPPER. You can find more about this and other LCC connect podcasts at LCCconnect.com.