Shriyoga Blog

To Share Or Not

Posted on September 24th, 2010

I am not sure where to begin with my second official blog.  I thought it would be so easy when we launched the new Shriyoga website in June… and then, July, August… nothing… blog fog (what I believe to be a close cousin of writer’s block).  It wasn’t that I didn’t have anything to share. It was more of the fear of putting it out there. The longer I waited to share something, anything, there was always something else more relevant. Eventually, I was buried under a mountain of ideas… a mountain of illusion; and under this mountain,  I found myself living more and more from my brain mind, and less from my heart mind, and thus, less willing to share in my contemplations when so many of you have asked me to start this blog.  Where’s the generosity in that?!?

Then, last week, my dear long time friend Jim Stark told me at our post tornado dinner something that I really needed to hear again:  that the only way to avoid mistakes, misunderstandings and the apparent chaos of it all is basically to lock yourself away.  Now, of course, many of you have heard me say in class many times that I do not actually believe in mistakes, but that topic is for another time.

Today, thanks to Jim, the tornado of 2010, and the following experience, I am taking a leap out of the fog:

One week ago, I left my apartment around 5pm just as the lightening was crackling to catch a cab uptown.  Luckily, I brought an umbrella.  Soon as I hit the street, I saw that everyone in anticipation of a down pour was hailing cabs and there were none available.

Walking to the corner of Broome and 6th Avenue (where you can catch a cab in both directions), I saw that a young woman had staked out the corner closer to the 6th Avenue traffic, so I claimed my territory closer to the cross town Broome Street traffic. Darkness descended and then, hail!

At first I didn’t know what happened when something hard and sharp hit my head, but within seconds there were rounds of “Oww!” and “What the F**ck! Hail?!?!” coming from various people as they ran for protection.  Immediately I put my umbrella up, and saw that the young woman was still on the corner getting pummeled.  As the hail turned to rain, she finally ran towards me.  Offering her protection under my umbrella, I asked her if we could do the unthinkable and actually share the next available cab.  She looked at me with awe as if I had offered something completely unheard of.  After a short discussion about our destinations, she enthusiastically said “Yes! Thank you”.

Within minutes of this decision to share something that really is fundamentally “ours” to share, a black town car arrived and cut a deal for 2 stops:  $20 flat.  Soon as we got in, she asked if she could share an epiphany she just had in the hail storm.  I sat silently as she told me that she was dumbfounded to realize that her FIRST instinct when she got hit in the head with the hail was to TWITTER.  Not run for cover.  She was wondering what had happened to her, and if twittering, texting, etc. was actually making her less rather than more “connected” to the here and now. We had a friendly conversation for about 15 blocks before I hopped out.  We spoke about what it means to be human and what encourages an ever increasing sensitivity and aliveness to our relationship with Nature and the world at large.  Only each of us can answer these kinds of questions.  The kinds of questions that ask who really “owns” anything in this world anyway?  Why are we still largely afraid of sharing, even if it is just a cab ride?  Why does it seem so foreign to share?  Why wouldn’t we want to share?  Why are we largely still afraid to share our resources? To reach out and open our hearts, our doors, our wallets to find balance, peace, and prosperity for all?  And, hail?  What the heck?  I thought that it was something pretty much reserved for the old testament.

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