You Are Not A Straw

Why Being the Message Matters More Than Delivering It

One morning, after watching Del drive off to his work in the woods, I headed to my home office to do my work. I had already tackled the pressing emails. Now it was time to write.

The Daily Battle With Resistance

Writing is not a simple or easy thing to do. Being a writer sounds romantic—candles, coffee, inspiration flowing like a mountain stream. But the reality? Most days, I have to wrestle myself into the chair. Massive resistance shows up like an uninvited guest and refuses to leave.

Sometimes I overcome it with a stern inner voice: “I don’t want to hear that you don’t feel like it. Put your phone down. No, you’re not hungry. Stop checking emails. Just sit down and don’t get up until you get your writing done.”

If that doesn’t work, I’ll remind myself that I’ve made promises to others. This technique usually works because, while I might be willing to disappoint myself, I refuse to break my word to someone else.

That’s why I announce what I’m doing. When I say, “I promise,” I will move heaven and earth to deliver.

And if even that doesn’t work? Bribery. “Write five hundred words, and you can read for fifteen minutes.”

Could there be a better excuse for indulging in the joy of reading? After all, doesn’t everyone say, “If you want to be a writer, you have to be a reader”? I have no problem with that!

That particular morning, I was ready. Not excited—excitement before writing is rare. I have to start first, then the excitement comes, like a flower opening to the sun. But I didn’t need bribery or pep talks. I was ready.

When Your Computer Speaks

My computer wasn’t.

While I was away, it had shut itself off and restarted on its own.

“Hum. What’s this about?” I asked myself. Not why the computer did it—though if it happened again, I’d need to investigate—but what was it trying to tell me?

Was I supposed to shut down and restart?

When I logged in, I found several messages waiting: my computer needed updates. Perhaps my trusty machine was dragging because I hadn’t taken time to care for it, to update it.

Like me.

I was dragging. I needed an update. I needed to restart.

Signs and symbols, right in front of me, just waiting to be noticed.

So I did a different day than I had planned. I updated the computer, and I updated myself.

The Straw Revelation

While I was updating—taking time to breathe, to restart—I thought about how much I think and write about spirituality and spiritual perception. Yet sometimes I don’t feel it sinking in or making a real difference.

That’s when it hit me: I was acting like a straw.

The words I was saying and thinking were like water moving through a straw.

The words went somewhere, touched something, but the straw itself? It never changed. It remained hollow, unchanged, untransformed.

Maybe this is why so many people have beautiful words to say but don’t live them.

They’re straws—conduits for truth that they never let transform them.

I realized I had been identifying as the deliverer of the water, not the water itself. I had been the channel, the vessel, the messenger—but standing apart from the message.

So I decided, right there in that quiet moment of realization, to stop being the straw.

I am not the straw through which the water flows.

I am the water.

Becoming the Water

You are not the straw either. You are the water.

You and I—together—we are the water. We flow. Without constraint. Without separation between what we know and who we are.

This isn’t about becoming something we’re not. It’s not about striving to reach some distant spiritual shore. It’s about recognizing what we already are.

Being, not becoming.

Living as Water

The next day, I was back at my computer, refreshed and thinking about being water. Not trying to become water. Not working toward being water. Simply being water.

And everything felt different.

When you live as the straw, you’re always separate from the truth you’re meant to embody.

You carry beautiful ideas without being transformed by them.

You speak wisdom without living it.

You remain rigid, hollow, unchanged—useful perhaps, but never fully alive.

But when you recognize yourself as the water? You flow. You adapt. You nourish. You reflect the light.

You move through obstacles rather than being stopped by them. You become what you’ve been teaching, what you’ve been learning, what you’ve been longing for all along.

Words of Wisdom

So here are my words of wisdom for today:

Take the time to update and restart yourself.

Give yourself permission to shut down the constant doing and simply be. Thoughts need space to bloom. Insights need silence to emerge. Truth needs stillness to take root.

And for heaven’s sake, don’t think you are a straw.

You are the water. Like me. Together.

That is a very different life to be living—not as a hollow vessel standing apart from truth, but as Truth itself, flowing, alive, transforming everything you touch.

Live as the straw, or be the water?

You already know the answer.

Now it’s time to live it.

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