Small but Deep

Shakti Gawain reached twenty people at a time. Maybe that's the point.

Caspar David Friedrich, The Lone Tree / Solitary Tree (1822)

It’s 5.20 am. I look out of my window, and it’s dark and quiet. I can just about hear the birds chirping. I meditate for ten minutes, then drink my espresso while staring into the yellowing skyline. I feel at peace with myself. A slight smile breaks onto my face.

Other days, I wake up, ignore my inner call to meditate, read, and journal, and instead scroll Twitter for the latest news, and end up feeling like shit.

I walk this tightrope every day.

One where I’m thoughtful and soulful in my quiet mornings, inside out. And another when I’m outside in the world at work or socially, where I switch to outside-in.

Living from the inside out means guiding your actions, choices, and sense of worth by your internal values and authentic self, rather than reacting to external stressors, opinions, or circumstances.

From experience, I know that living inside out is the best way to reach the inner satisfaction I crave. Whenever I’m in flow, like writing this article, it’s guided by my values: showing up on the page and letting my soul express itself.

However, I do fear that our future world is making it harder for us to live a life from the inside out, as more and more, we are being directed by outer pressures.

I share Eric Rittenberry’s (from Poetic Outlaws) fears that civilisation is unravelling, and I worry for our kids, though I’m a touch more hopeful.

We came into being to have a subjective experience, through our senses, our intellect, our connection to others. All of it is being slowly eroded by the technology that dulls, distracts, and poisons our minds.

We need a quiet revolution in reclaiming our authenticity.

I truly believe that understanding and metabolising what philosophers, literary giants, and poets have thought is not only soothing but could take us out of the doomsday funk we’re in, to become more whole—to live a quiet life filled with inner fulfilment and outer presence.

I want to understand what Rumi meant when he said, “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.”

And when I understand them, transfer my thoughts to the journal, refine them, and publish on Substack, I’m living with courage, authenticity, and meaning. My heart bursts with contentment.

A few weeks ago, I started working on my purpose statement. A document that would set an intention rather than finalise my life’s destination.

And I immediately thought of Shakti Gawain.

She died on 11 November 2018, in California. Her first book sold 7 million copies, and across all her work she sold over 10 million copies. And no national newspaper thought her death was worth an obituary.

Gawain could have easily been as famous as other self-help gurus, like Deepak Chopra, who turned his philosophy into an industry, over 90 books, wellness centres, corporate consulting, stadium lectures, the full commercial machine.

Instead, she refused to license herself into mass coaching programs, ignoring all the tours and television specials to teach small groups out of her own home.

She wanted to keep her influence small but deep.

I know that because after I read her book, Creative Visualisation, I looked for a way to work with her directly, but she didn’t offer one-on-one or online coaching.

She kept the work small enough that it still mirrored her own inner state. It fit what she taught. In her book Creating True Prosperity, she wrote: “Prosperity is an internal experience, not an external state.”

She was doing this not for fame or money, but because she genuinely believed that creative visualisation, a product of her soul’s work, could benefit her clients.

Like her, I don’t want to be the charismatic guru who inspires change over a weekend, the equivalent of taking Advil for a symptom while the cause goes untreated.

Instead, I’ve realised that transformation is built on slow, repetitive change that must tackle the underlying problem.

Even though Gawain and the other self-help teachers probably share similar content. What sets her apart is the delivery: a slow drip, over a whole life, not a weekend high. A small, quiet revolution.

Real change, real transformation, needs work. It needs long sessions, three or four hours, going slowly, going deliberately. Repetition in slow terms. That’s the actual machinery of inward change.

At scale, depth is mechanically impossible.

When writing out my purpose statement, an image of a small solitary tree kept surfacing. I want to be that tree, not tall, but deep-rooted, standing for years, instead of the tall tree with shallow roots that topples after a few seasons.

What’s clear for me now is that my writings are first and foremost for me, then a small group who trust and believe that I use the greats’ ideas and my own reflection to decipher why and how to live the good life.

I’d rather have what Kevin Kelly called a thousand true fans than a million followers, only a few hundred of whom truly care.

With every new technology comes another obstacle. Whether it was the internet, whether it was the phone in our hands, or whether it’s AI now, we are slowly retreating from our soul.

I’m 58, I’m well-read, I’ve seen life, I’ve been places, and still, I get stuck every day in this quicksand of a trap set up by powerful experts trying to hijack our attention.

What chance do our kids have?

In the closing lines of Middlemarch, George Eliot beautifully illustrates the power of quiet influence:

“Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive; for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”

What’s become clear these last few weeks is that my purpose itself is simple:

I want to become who I am in the journal every day, out in the world. I want to do that by thinking and writing with depth, living simply and mindfully, always expressing my inner soul and heart, so that I awaken and I’m in constant flow of my own soul’s work. And if that happens to resonate with others and inspire them to do the same, then why not?

And I know that I’ve been challenged, constantly frustrated with the lack of readership. But what’s clear for me now is that I’m in this game of thinking and writing not because I want to change the world.

It’s because I want to change me.