The best guidance I ever received on how to share and talk about meditation came after a week of silent retreat.
I remember feeling so excited to share the breakthroughs and realizations with anyone who would listen. Not only had I spent a week without talking and felt eager to get back into it, but I sensed that this was a profound experience that was going to transform the course of my life. I wanted my loved ones to understand.
Our group met one last time to talk about transitioning home and our teachers explained, “When people ask you how your week was, answer them as follows, ‘Good! How was yours?’”
Good! How was yours? You mean I’m supposed to keep all of this to myself? Everything I’ve learned? Everything I’ve seen? I feel like a profoundly different person, a profoundly better person. How can I not share this with everyone I know?
But yes…actually…that’s exactly what I was being advised to do. My teachers went on. “If anyone really wants to know, they’ll ask.”
So this is what I’m here to pass on. They’ll ask. And really, they will. Whether it’s directly or indirectly, your way of being will attract people to want to know more. It’s happened in my life time and time again and has resulted in some of my favorite conversations.
The real art is in what to share and how to share it. On that same retreat, we were given another pointer that’s stuck with me ever since: “When you get home,” they said, “be more loving and less wise.”
Especially as a meditation teacher, there’s a large part of me who wants to come off like I have it all together and know what I’m talking about. I used to fear that I wasn’t “enlightened” enough, especially with people who knew me before I started making meditation a priority. But in stepping back, I realized that was the wise part of me wanting to look and sound a certain way. When I checked in with what the loving part of me wanted to do, I knew it was to be as open and vulnerable as possible with what meditation has helped me work through, what I’m still in the middle of, and what I hope to come.
Trusting you can read the room and understand when someone’s really interested, I encourage you to let it rip. You don’t need to have it all figured out to offer something helpful, and if your loved ones end up at Journey, we’ll be excited to greet them with open arms.
Come sit with Andrew on Journey LIVE weekdays at 10am EST
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