Social media
Question: I want to play some more with the idea of preparing for my creation, the thing I want to create, to materialise. What does that look like?
Answer: Expectancy. Expectation. Enthusiasm. Looking out for it, as you would someone who is coming to see you or who is coming home. It's going to happen; you just don't know exactly when because you can't see it approaching yet.
As for your writing career and its success, proceed as if you're already there, as if you already have it. Practice the habits of a great writer: write; spend time pondering and wondering and exploring and jotting down notes; preserve the space and time you need; talk about yourself and your work as if it's a done deal, it's already a reality, because it is; you just can't see it yet, you're not yet holding it in your hands and seeing it in your bank account. But those things arrive last. They're all on their way to you.
Question: Talk to me, please, about social media and whether I should be active on it.
Answer: Does it give you the time and space you need to write the sort of books you really want to be writing? No? Then there's your answer.
Social media is great for people who need to feel connected to others, to hear from others that what they're doing meets with others' approval or is getting noticed. It's a great substitute for connection with one's source, with one's inner being, one's greater self. It's a quick hit of emotion — joy or anger — so it feels important, relevant, even essential.
But over time, that hit is less and less satisfying; and inevitably one's inherent belief in dichotomy (good/bad) takes over such that “good” is always met with “bad.” Admirers and detractors / adversaries, in equal measure, the latter robbing the former of the power to please, uplift, satisfy the basic craving to belong, to be approved, to be found worthy.
Is that really an environment to which you want to subject yourself? At some point you may, as it's neither good nor bad. It's just something that humans are playing with at the moment. It can certainly be useful for letting people know about your work. But before you do, KNOW YOURSELF.
Be sure you're well connected with your source, so that you're not looking to others to validate you and your work, approve of you, love you, and other such needs of an isolated individual. Use social media to inform and inspire, holding steady to your own connection to your eternal, essential nature. Unless you can do that effortlessly, consistently, it may be best not to use it at all.
It's just not true that you need to be on social media to be successful. Although, it does depend on how one defines success. Lots of “followers” is not the sort of success you seek. Lots of readers, yes. Lots of attendees at in-person events, certainly, if you want. But social media “success”
is an illusion. It is vaporous. And it can be a trap, a bind, of one's own making.
Do you want devotees? Disciples? Followers?
Question: No. I don't. I absolutely don't want to be some sort of celebrity or prophet/guru. I want to be a writer, a teacher, someone whose books are loved by readers because they inspire individual experience of the things I write about, individual exploration and discovery, individual rediscovery and reconnection with one's own inner being, greater self, source, eternal nature.
The love is not so much for me, the teacher, as it is for oneself and one's own beautiful, unique, and powerful experience of life. How is one to inspire that in a tweet or an instagram post? I don't know; and until I do, I'll do without these platforms.
But can one successfully/effectively reach readers without social media these days? How can I reach my target audience without it?
Answer: Let others guide you. Let others do it for you, those in the book business and in the magazine business, the wellness community, the spiritual communities. There is a real hunger for… well, this hunger is temporarily satisfied by many different things, including novelty, primacy (being the first at something), stimulation, conflict — but the real hunger is for reconnection with one's eternal nature and an understanding of how it fits with modern human life.
Like you for the longest time, there has been a disconnect and a confusion about how a person can be both human and eternal; physical/material and pure energy. So, most people — almost everyone, in fact — bounces chaotically, irrationally, and uncontrollably between spiritual and material, human and “divine,” never being entirely one thing or the other, and unable to completely reconcile and integrate the two seemingly incompatible states of being.
Here is where this work solves the problem. It bridges the gap, drops the (imaginary) veil, and offers practical ways to enjoy both states of being at the same time, and all of the time. No gap. No veil. No separation, no two separate states. No incompatibility. Rather, resolution, reconciliation, and recognition.
But first you must live it. And then live it some more, until it is first nature — not “second nature”; natural. Until it is your always state of being. Then you can teach it by living it and by writing about it and talking about it.
In the meantime, ignore everyone else. Don't worry about what they're up to and whether you should be, too. Do your own thing, as a matter of top priority, because it is your greatest longing, and your now future, the direction in which you are headed with all speed and enthusiasm.
There is no interest in following others' paths when your own is so clear, so compelling, so exciting, so delicious, so pleasing, and so enjoyable. Even now, even just the thought of it pleases, satisfies, enlivens, and enriches. What more could you possibly want?
There is no interest in following others' paths
when your own is so clear and so compelling.
The Game
hide seek find laugh
Christine King
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