Thank you! I would be curious (for very self-interested reasons) to know how you think this applies to journalling and other private writing, as opposed to writing for communication. The communication-versus-holding idea resonates strongly with my own experience, but it hadn't previously occurred to me that there might also be some benefit to not journalling quite so much…
all i can really say is that I stopped journaling for like a month, and have journaled very little since, and it has seemed ot create a dynamic where if I want to keep an insight, the "recording on paper" drive gets put instead into a "hold this in the entire way i think feel and act today and tomorrow and the next day" drive,
It was Wilber who first introduced me to the term 'perennial philosophy' and it seems relevant here. Perennials keep blooming season and after season, from the same root. Once you've tuned into the root of truth, what good are more ways to attempt to define it? We're all spinning around the same axis in some way or another. Yet can the creative impulse to express one's reality ever be suppressed?
This has put words to exactly how I’ve been feeling, thank you!
I stepped off the content creation treadmill last year. And coincidence or not, I’ve experienced far more personal transformation since holding my insights to myself.
One thing I’ve been exploring instead is making art. Creative expression. Not intellectual an experience but alchemising it.
Sometimes it comes out as words or as images. Sometimes I share it and sometimes I don’t.
But it feels more rewarding.
And I like the narrative approach of ‘show don’t tell’. Allow someone to experience something through your art rather than telling them what to feel. It creates an experience for them.
I love the delicious irony contained in this piece. As a teacher of yoga etc I find myself lately making less noise and inviting my students to listen more. Once an enthusiastic leader of kirtan, I’ve fallen silent. Ironically in the months since I stopped publishing articles I’ve gained more subscribers than when I wrote every week. The impulse I once had to make a mark has been replaced by one to not add to the ever growing noise. I suppose there’s wisdom there that I don’t quite understand yet!
Through this article I finally understood how so many men can 'speak about' all these clever ideas and write the wisdom down but don't live it in their daily actions. I - as a pretty embodied woman - can only write things down (to be published I mean) when I truly got them under my skin. But I recognise the writing - this time in my dairy - that is more like an invitation to be embodied over the coming months and years.
This has been a struggle. Information easily becomes addictive and — when imbibed faster than one can grok — leads to a mounting integration debt that is either paid in negative valence that eventually forces one to stop and reflect, or reverberates in the mirror of life as a humbling rupture born of doing too much too soon. Thanks for the reminder that it's okay to breathe.
and yet, words such as these are so important! Thank you for writing this. I think it is important for all of us, rather than pursuing endless novelty, to start converging on the same truths in common to all who share our embodied existence.
I’ve had exactly the same insights about insights and been meaning to put it into a text, but you did it so well already, so I’m free. 100% agree with all of it. thank you
Usually when something comes I want to catch it, not even publish it anywhere, just taking a note for myself. One day many years ago I was walking and I didn’t have anything to take a note. I was very inspired and many nice verses came to me. I was quite frustrated I could not write anything down, so I try to memorize the verses. I noticed that memorizing the verses was basically closing the channel, if that makes sense. I could choose between having more nice things come and go, or keep some of the ones I already got. I was mostly curious, so I let go and many ideas came to mind, very fast, and most of them disappeared as they appeared.
Later on I was reflecting on this. It felt like a piece of land where I could leave thoughts to sediment, and those thoughts could create some sort of soil for future thoughts to flourish. Or I could use the thoughts as they were, but they could not be “used” by other thoughts anymore, they were “spent”.
I realized sometimes is better to not write down the ideas and to let them disappear, and I was happy thinking the ideas would be coming back in the future in some other way. It feels almost like a subconscious savings account.
When you write about embodiment I was thinking about this. And when you wrote about writing something that you didn’t know yet, I think what you wrote was just this sediment, that you put on paper without digesting / embodying entirely. When did you know more about it? When it screamed out of your body, or when your mind had time to believe it catch up?
Positively gorgeous, and echoing things I have wondered about for so long. I remember in my yoga teacher training, many years ago, noticing the urge to verbalize the MOMENT I made a discovery. It was the verbal equivalent of "pics or it didn't happen." I have thousands of books and still read thousands of articles, all kind of looking for the same thing (I mean, I read this one! Ha!). Me. But I have noticed this within myself, and really started to experience the freedom you describe, the quiet acknowledgement that I could read thousands more but it's still the reader that's the most intriguing part of the experience. There are fields and fields and fields of open space to explore there. THANK YOU!
Thank you! I would be curious (for very self-interested reasons) to know how you think this applies to journalling and other private writing, as opposed to writing for communication. The communication-versus-holding idea resonates strongly with my own experience, but it hadn't previously occurred to me that there might also be some benefit to not journalling quite so much…
all i can really say is that I stopped journaling for like a month, and have journaled very little since, and it has seemed ot create a dynamic where if I want to keep an insight, the "recording on paper" drive gets put instead into a "hold this in the entire way i think feel and act today and tomorrow and the next day" drive,
which seems to work better
you put the meta in metabolize
*seems to work better -- for me, at this stage
It was Wilber who first introduced me to the term 'perennial philosophy' and it seems relevant here. Perennials keep blooming season and after season, from the same root. Once you've tuned into the root of truth, what good are more ways to attempt to define it? We're all spinning around the same axis in some way or another. Yet can the creative impulse to express one's reality ever be suppressed?
This has put words to exactly how I’ve been feeling, thank you!
I stepped off the content creation treadmill last year. And coincidence or not, I’ve experienced far more personal transformation since holding my insights to myself.
One thing I’ve been exploring instead is making art. Creative expression. Not intellectual an experience but alchemising it.
Sometimes it comes out as words or as images. Sometimes I share it and sometimes I don’t.
But it feels more rewarding.
And I like the narrative approach of ‘show don’t tell’. Allow someone to experience something through your art rather than telling them what to feel. It creates an experience for them.
Yes!!! This article and this comment sum up exactly what I have been feeling the last couple of years. Thank you both! 🙏
I love the delicious irony contained in this piece. As a teacher of yoga etc I find myself lately making less noise and inviting my students to listen more. Once an enthusiastic leader of kirtan, I’ve fallen silent. Ironically in the months since I stopped publishing articles I’ve gained more subscribers than when I wrote every week. The impulse I once had to make a mark has been replaced by one to not add to the ever growing noise. I suppose there’s wisdom there that I don’t quite understand yet!
to be clear, no irony here. all of this is from months ago, I kept it silent and let it settle in before talking about it to anyone
Through this article I finally understood how so many men can 'speak about' all these clever ideas and write the wisdom down but don't live it in their daily actions. I - as a pretty embodied woman - can only write things down (to be published I mean) when I truly got them under my skin. But I recognise the writing - this time in my dairy - that is more like an invitation to be embodied over the coming months and years.
This has been a struggle. Information easily becomes addictive and — when imbibed faster than one can grok — leads to a mounting integration debt that is either paid in negative valence that eventually forces one to stop and reflect, or reverberates in the mirror of life as a humbling rupture born of doing too much too soon. Thanks for the reminder that it's okay to breathe.
Beautiful, evocative and alluring. Thank you for the reminder.
and yet, words such as these are so important! Thank you for writing this. I think it is important for all of us, rather than pursuing endless novelty, to start converging on the same truths in common to all who share our embodied existence.
I’ve had exactly the same insights about insights and been meaning to put it into a text, but you did it so well already, so I’m free. 100% agree with all of it. thank you
What a generous article! Thank you so much.
I have this strange vision from writing poetry:
Usually when something comes I want to catch it, not even publish it anywhere, just taking a note for myself. One day many years ago I was walking and I didn’t have anything to take a note. I was very inspired and many nice verses came to me. I was quite frustrated I could not write anything down, so I try to memorize the verses. I noticed that memorizing the verses was basically closing the channel, if that makes sense. I could choose between having more nice things come and go, or keep some of the ones I already got. I was mostly curious, so I let go and many ideas came to mind, very fast, and most of them disappeared as they appeared.
Later on I was reflecting on this. It felt like a piece of land where I could leave thoughts to sediment, and those thoughts could create some sort of soil for future thoughts to flourish. Or I could use the thoughts as they were, but they could not be “used” by other thoughts anymore, they were “spent”.
I realized sometimes is better to not write down the ideas and to let them disappear, and I was happy thinking the ideas would be coming back in the future in some other way. It feels almost like a subconscious savings account.
When you write about embodiment I was thinking about this. And when you wrote about writing something that you didn’t know yet, I think what you wrote was just this sediment, that you put on paper without digesting / embodying entirely. When did you know more about it? When it screamed out of your body, or when your mind had time to believe it catch up?
Positively gorgeous, and echoing things I have wondered about for so long. I remember in my yoga teacher training, many years ago, noticing the urge to verbalize the MOMENT I made a discovery. It was the verbal equivalent of "pics or it didn't happen." I have thousands of books and still read thousands of articles, all kind of looking for the same thing (I mean, I read this one! Ha!). Me. But I have noticed this within myself, and really started to experience the freedom you describe, the quiet acknowledgement that I could read thousands more but it's still the reader that's the most intriguing part of the experience. There are fields and fields and fields of open space to explore there. THANK YOU!