What We Hide

Wisdom 2.0 with Soren

Jul 24, 2023

Dear Friends,

I have always been good at hiding.

When I was a kid, I never learned to ride a bike. There were bikes around, but somehow I just never learned.

When I got past that age that most kids learn, about 12 or 13, I felt enormous shame that I could not ride a bike.

I came up with a strategy: Avoid, hide, and deflect!

If a friend asked me to go bike riding I would come up with some excuse — my leg hurt, I was tired, I did not feel well, I had other plans, etc.

Fast forward ten years … My friend Tim asked me to go bike riding, and I replied, “I would love to but I don’t know how to ride a bike.”

He responded, “Well, that’s easy to fix,” and off we went to a local park.

And in a short time, I was riding a bike.

A decade of shame evaporated in about an hour!

Now, I could have asked many people in those ten years if they would teach me how to ride a bike … But why didn’t I?

As best I can tell, I did not want to feel the shame of admitting the truth to someone. Instead of feeling the shame and then moving through it … I lived with it.

DALL-E image when asked to create an image of a kid hiding in a field

THERE IS PAIN AND THERE IS PAIN

One of my teachers used to say, “There is the pain that causes more pain and there is the pain that heals pain.” The latter is feeling what needs to be felt.

The pain that ends pain is allowing the pain and suffering, and meeting it with compassion, so it moves through.

One of the lessons of the universe seems to be that we cannot heal anything we first do not accept.

This has been a very long and hard-learned lesson for me.

LAST THOUGHTS

As I get ready to push send on this email, a voice in my head says, “Hold it, there is a place for hiding and withholding.”

And I agree. Withholding has a place. It is a beautiful and needed skill. We do not want to tell everyone everything, but there are also moments when it is time to let something be known.

It is amazing how an experience changes when it is greeted in the light of awareness.

May you know what needs to be revealed … and the right time and place to do so.

See upcoming events below.

Blessings,

SOREN