I want you to know…o…o…oh…oh!… am i talking ‘at you’ or ‘with you’?

Some years ago I remember imparting some ‘definite knowledge’.  At the time I was talking to someone else as well as James, and i had my back to him. However I remember noticing that the quality of his attention had changed. Because, at the time, i was pleased at knowing something a little unusual, i could have imagined that this was because he was surprised or impressed.

Since then i  have had the experience of listening to many people telling me, and other people, the truth about me, about others, and about how things are, or how they should be done, and I suspect that he was in fact  noticing the tightening of the voice and body which goes with having the sense that ‘this is how it is, I know! ‘.
At that point i had lost touch with the ground and gone into a ‘world of one’… speaking out my confident assertion, with actually no particular regard to the listeners. So he was more likely to have been registering that change in me… from an openness to closed certainty.

There can be an artificiality, a tightness and lost disconnectedness, when someone is regurgitating ingested ‘facts’ with a desire to be the ‘one who knows’.  Although its quite understandable to want to be someone who knows, particularly in our culture where becoming a library of information is confused with wisdom, and especially if one’s ‘offerings’  have been disparaged in the past…however it is the discourse (monologue!) of the ego seeking recognition/affirmation.  It can be not very welcoming to others and can come with a, not very tasty, seasoning of pride.

Communication which is really addressed to the other, attuned in seeing and feeling how they are and what is helpful, cooked just for them… not too much and not too little… Even if it perhaps needs sometimes to be directive, it will be received and digested much more readily than a shower of ego driven ‘spears’.

BTW There is something very uncomfortable about the visual image of having a point of view and sitting rigidly upon it (oh…brings tears to the eyes!) images-3

a nice flat bed of nails seems inviting by comparison.                  images-2