On Sharing. Aka processing a bit from yesterday.
I often feel / think into how much I’m going to share of my personal process, out into the world.
Yesterday’s blog post was a peek into what life can be like for me. I heard from several of you — most everyone in some sort of “thank you; this is nice to read” but one listener brought up a vital point: you share something too early and it can be like dissecting something living, something in process. (I will certainly be sitting with that image for awhile.)
As far as making a rule about “do share” or “don’t share” a personal process … as many of you already know, I find it useful to feel into the “at best” and “at worst” aspects of any given teaching.
>>> And, before we begin, know that no teaching gets to be spared from this. There are no words so pure that they haven’t been used for horrific crimes, and none so vile that they haven’t helped someone at some point. <<<
At best, personal sharing says “hey, that painful thing you might be going through, I not only have gone through that in some distant past, I really, intimately get it. You are not alone.”
At worst, something happens akin to the listener’s insight about dissection. Something dies prematurely, the shadow never really gets to fully compost, to die into what it will become. (Imagine if you poked your head into a cocoon mid-process. Game over.)
And at best, not sharing is just that: really time for you to be you. For me to be me. To fully have our own experience, free of “how is this going to sound when I put it on paper for the world to see, or share this with my yoga class tonight?”
And at worst, not sharing means isolation, the kind that withers you like lack of sunlight and fresh air. It means fear and not putting anything out into the world because you feel like it’s not ready, the kind of ready that it will never be because, of course, you never really are. You do it anyway.
Digestion / thoughts. I’d love to hear your take on this, dear reader, if you’d care to share.
Thanks, love, from my life to yours, Liam
ps if you didn’t catch it, you might really enjoy the 15-min yielding to the “it’s not going to be okay” meditation