It’s a mix of things. Part of it is simply the momentum of conditioning, the habits and patterns developed over a lifetime of passionate pursuit of knowledge and equally passionate sharing of that knowledge with others. As an academic by training, I have been steeped in the rhythm of intellectual inquiry and discourse for as long as I can remember. So there is a way in which engaging in these activities is simply what this organism naturally does, like an apple tree producing apples.

I can see multiple strands that have shaped the trajectory of this life. There’s a ancestral legacy of teachers and professors. There’s childhood conditioning that seeded a drive to communicate. So in many ways, the outward form of my teaching activity has deep roots.

At the same time, for most of my journey, I had no interest in being a spiritual guide. There was a lot of fear around the responsibility involved, the potential for harming others or causing scandal. What changed everything was the “release” process. There was a profound relaxation, a sense of having put down a great burden. The impulse to share, to offer whatever might be helpful, arose spontaneously.

Since then, there has been an easeful flow of engagement without much strategic thinking. Writing, teaching, dialoguing – it all just kind of happens, the system operating according to its own conditioned ways of being. And while some of the details are clearly linked to my particular history, there’s a feeling that it’s ultimately not a personal matter.

I don’t have a grand vision or mission. In a sense, it’s not “my” teaching, “my” contribution. There’s a lightness and humility in seeing that it’s all a fleeting dance of conditioning. The invitation is to hold it all lightly, to show up fully while wearing our roles and identities like a well-worn costume, knowing that in the end, nothing here belongs to us.

But I also can’t deny that there is a naturally arising impulse of wanting to be of service, to share what has been meaningful and liberating in my own journey in case it might be of benefit to others on the path. The key, as in any activity, is to engage that impulse without being trapped by it, without turning it into a new self-identity project. To write and teach and share in a spirit of open offering, with passion but without attachment to outcomes. To hold the intention lightly, as yet another appearance in the great dream, another fleeting form that the boundless creativity of the cosmos is taking in this moment.

In the end, I don’t know that any of us can fully parse the various strands that come together to shape our actions in the world. It is always this ineffable mystery dancing as and through these conditioned body-minds, and the invitation is to show up fully to the dance, to bring all of our gifts and quirks and hard-earned insights to the table, even as we wear it all lightly, leaving room for the unimaginable, the unknown, the forever fresh and untamed reality of this moment taking us beyond all that we think we know.