So recently I shared this on facebook:
All understandings are conceptual. Even a living realization can be grasped by the mind and turned into another concept to be understood and shared. What if we stopped going into the domain of mental concepts altogether and simply rested in what is here without moving, without also going to the mind to label, describe, remember, or understand… Just experiencing whatever happens as it arises, purely and untouched.
and friend of mine brought up an excellent concern:
Can you imagine if after we process thought into concept and fail to SHARE it? So many others wouldn’t be touched, stimulated and motivated to realize more. I so enjoy following your travels and posts. It’s like a good shot in the arm, for you are always willing to SHARE freely. Thanks for that! ♥
Yeah, that hits right on the money on some of my concerns as well. What’s being questioned here, on a deeper level beyond whether we say something or not, is whether or not we have to take what is discovered through the heart and immediately bring it up into the mind to be stored, leaving the heart and quickly going into the head.
Let’s give a little background here and set the context by sharing a pattern here I’ve noticed…
The Need to Have and Share Realizations
Whenever there’s some sort of realization or ‘aha’ moment here, I’ve noticed an immediate impulse to somehow put it into words and go out and share that. Post about it on facebook or twitter. Write a blog post about it. Make a video about it… all with a deeper fundamental idea that something *bad* will happen if you don’t share what you have come to know! Afterall, we’re here to serve one another and give of our gifts, are we not? Yet is it possible that in our rush to give, we do so before allowing ourselves to receive the fullness of that which we have to offer?
At the same time, I’ve noticed an attachment around both realizations and the sharing of realizations. You see, having realizations can show you that you are growing and moving forward. The sharing of them can make you feel special and wise. You even get rewarded by compliments and thank yous, and those treats can continue to feed the impulse to give more and more. Heck, the realizations are even being used to help financially fund my life! In a sense, they’re like “my product.” I share my realizations here with you online which helps me continue traveling, living, exploring. It is thanks to your donations, affiliate purchases of products I recommend, clicking on the ads I have on this site, and so on that I’m able to put gas in my car, pay my credit card bills, and get food in my belly! (Sure this also comes in other ways, but this is one of my main sources of money.) And so if my realizations and insights feel like they lie at the heart of my physical survival (whether or not that is true), then well, let’s just say that it makes them feel important, almost life or death! 
and so we can make realizations out to seem critically important… yet what are realizations, exactly?
Realizations and Expanded Awareness
The other day I finally had the wonderful opportunity to meet with Matt Kahn and Julie Dittmar who are both absolutely amazing people!! It was an incredible gift to spend time with the both of them. After Matt’s satsang and Julie’s meditations here in California, we had a chance to talk about realizations and their importance.
Let’s take a look at how realizations themselves work, and much of this Matt pointed out and helped me discover so mad props to him.
When awareness expands a bit to encompass more of what is, within this new area of expanded awareness lies something that wasn’t seen before. What awareness sees is then experienced and discovered/realized. Then what may or may not happen is that the mind jumps in and translates into words and concepts that which is seen, and this collection of ideas we often call “the realization” when actually these are nothing more than pointers. If we’re directly experiencing that to which the pointer points, what is the need of a pointer? Just experience the experience!
See, what’s really key here is not the mind’s translations of the seeing of awareness but actually the awareness itself. It suddenly struck me that realizations themselves aren’t important and Matt nodded. No, they’re really not, he responded. Eventually there’s realization that realizations don’t even matter all that much. This one really hit deep…
Out of the Heart and Into the Head
Another thing I’ve repeatedly noticed is that when the clarity of expanded awareness quickly moves into mind to be verbalized, the experience of the expansion itself is often diminished. In my attempt to immediately give what I have before it settles in and stabilizes, I myself actually lose it. Wait a minute… The intent was never for me to have less in the name of you having more, but that’s what continues to happen. I sacrifice my own experience in the name of hopefully helping you have yours. Something is definitely off here, you know?
It’s like.. imagine for a moment if you were to sit down and eat your favorite meal, something monumentally delicious. Now instead of sitting down and deeply savoring the experience by staying in the world of direct sensory experience, you instead go into your mind and start describing the taste, the feeling, the texture. You then move from having the experience of tasting to the experience of describing what it’s like to have the experience of tasting. The two are WORLDS apart. When you start experiencing your thoughts, you’re no longer feeling life as it is. You’re experiencing your thoughts about the world. You’re not feeling. You’re thinking.
In a sense, it’s almost like a sort of premature evacuation. 
Out of the vulnerable heart and back into the safety of the head. When all the energy starts arising (whether the experience is one of physical sensation, experiential clarity of seeing, sexual energy rising, or whatever else…) it’s like there is an exiting of the world of feeling and a retreat into the world of mind, as if the mind needs to do something about the experience. Instead of holding the space for that energy to be present, you go into thinking about it. Rather than doing this, there is another possibility: Let go of the need to go from feeling to thinking and expand in your capacity to fully embrace life and experience the fullness of all it has to offer. Just FEEL it, without naming it or describing it, without holding on it, trying to maintain it, or share it with others. Just FEEL it. Quit flitting about so much. Be still.
What is here to be enjoyed is silence. Silence without escape into thought. There are many realizations and aha’s in silence, and yet these are all blossomings and flowerings of silence itself. Silence verbalized is never the purity silence itself, but only a pointer. Silence is the point. Silence is the heart. Silence is the home. All the words are simply decorating the silence, as Matt likes to put it.
To Share or Not To Share?
and so, is there any value to sharing what is realized? Sure. Look how many teachers across the ages have shared what they have discovered. It all has a purpose and reason. And yet if the sharing is coming from a place of attachment or ego fulfillment, that needs to be addressed.
What is it like, for once in your life, (and I’m talking to myself here…) to not try and give away and share everything you have discovered? To let people discover things without your help, as if you guys wouldn’t be okay without my help. What is it like to experience things and not tell people? What is it like to sit and feel like something horrible will happen or the world will miss out on these discoveries if I don’t share them, to allow this fear to arise and not move to take action upon it.
On one hand yes, we are here to help, contribute, and serve. God works through us, sure. And yet on the paradoxical flip side of this, there is also God saying, “Relax. Take it easy. I don’t need your help. I got this.”
